


By the end

by Stieglitzz



Series: D(oll) & D(imple) [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Everyone Has Issues, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gore, Heartbreak, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Marben Provides Comfort, Murder, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Torture, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:01:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 57,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27608015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stieglitzz/pseuds/Stieglitzz
Summary: Five has come home to his family. Marben's in town too, to hide, and also honor a debt.It would sound like the perfect chance to mend fences, were it not for the end of the world just around the corner and the freakin' Horsemen spreading panic throughout the city with their guns.Sequel to 'By your window'.
Series: D(oll) & D(imple) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018534
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	1. 0.

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily implied child's death.

[ _Chapter Soundtrack_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABRxvbZnHpk)

It’s an intense night, that of March 21st: simultaneously, the police handcuff three bruised and stabbed ruffians, a paramedic steals from death’s grasp a drug addict who just overdosed, an old man dies alone in his grand house and one son of a bitch selects reverse and runs over a child, failing for some reason to immediately call an ambulance.  
They all end up at the ER - the ruffians, the junkie, the child - except for the son of a bitch and the old man, who goes straight to the morgue to wait for an autopsy. Yet, even as he lies dead and stiff with a name-tag hanging from his big toe, he still finds himself having one last, fateful encounter.

In the ER, the Aspiring Chief of Medicine turns his back to the table and kicks the door to vent his frustration, taking his leave accompanied by the crash of the handle hitting the wall and his own curse.  
Nurse Jones, standing beside the table and removing the electrodes from her patient’s chest, senses a visitor: the skin on the back of her neck crawls, a faint sound of little bells echoes into her ears and she immediately knows there's yet someone else in the room.  
The newcomer stammers something unintelligible out of surprise, making the nurse shake in revulsion as soon as she recognizes his voice. Therefore, she completely ignores him and dedicates herself to her duty.

“What happened, Calvin?” she asks, looking at the child in a way that makes it abundantly clear she’s not someone to be trifling with; her tone of voice, however, is gentle, calm.  
“Nothing!” he chirps, his voice too casual as he looks up at the blond woman, swinging his little feet. Nurse Jones makes a disapproving face.  
“How did you get that gash on your forehead, then?”.  
“I run into a tree”.  
“Do I look like someone who likes to be made fun of?”.  
“Dunno...no one usually likes that…”.  
“So you can easily guess I'm not willing to let you do it”.  
Calvin's little face darkens and he bows his head, avoiding her gaze. Nurse Jones feels terribly guilty and sighs, reaching out to gently caress his back.  
“It’s okay, if you don’t want to tell me”.  
“It's not that I don't want to…I'm afraid you’ll get angry”.  
“Not at you. You can tell me anything. I promise, baby” the nurse says softly, brushing Calvin’s curly hair away from his wound. The kid leans into the caress, even if his lower lip wobbles a little.  
“Does it hurt?” she asks, and he nods; the woman bends down, then, and kisses the wound on the small child’s head. A light gasps reaches them from behind, but she ignores it, and when she moves away Calvin’s forehead is unmarred.  
“Oh…the pain’s gone!” it’s all the little boy enthusiastically says, before launching himself into the nurse’s arms. She holds him tightly, caressing the now uninjured little head nested onto her chest, kissing it and rocking the boy for a little while, basking in the sensation of his little arms encircling her waist.  
After what seems like just an instant, Calvin turns his head and catches a glimpse of the small figure waiting by the door.  
“Who’s that?”.  
Nurse Jones’ eyes follow his pointing finger, and finds herself sweetly smiling to the little girl. She looks lovely, in a white dress with purple butterflies on and tiny braids decorated with colored beads.  
“Chloe, your twin sister”.  
At that, Calvin moves back a bit to give the woman a puzzled look, to which she responds with an open, tender one. The child holds her gaze for a few seconds, then shrugs and smiles, showing the space left form his missing front tooth.  
The nurse pulls his shirt down to cover his naked chest, smoothing it on the shoulders.  
“Now, go meet your sister. She’s been waiting you for a long time. And remember to come look for me, if you’ll ever need anything, all right? Both of you. I’ll always be there”.  
The boy nods, then, and with a last squeeze, another kiss and a small giggle he jumps down the table, going straight to his twin; she welcomes him with a smile and an outstretched hand.  
Nurse Jones watches as little Chloe waves at her before turning and leaving with her newfound brother.

“ **Extraordinary** **!** ”.

The marveled whisper spoils the sad yet sweet moment.  
Before she even realizes it, the nurse is gritting her teeth, squaring her shoulders and forcing herself to take deep breaths through flaring nostrils. The old man tries to say something else, but she doesn’t give him the chance: with a slight jerk of her chin and a flash of lightning, he vanishes through the same door Calvin and Chloe walked out from, but headed to an entirely different place.

A few seconds later, a tremendous cry slashes the night in two, cutting off the woman’s sigh of relief: she looks back at Calvin’s broken little body that lays - left behind - onto the emergency bed with its head open and a naked chest, and curses her work, the world she lives in, whatever funny genetic combination made her eyes and not her hands so different from other people’s ones.

-

Two hours later, Calvin and Chloe’s desperate mother has been sedated, hydrated and hospitalized, and the police have been urged to investigate the reasons that led the neighbor not to call the ambulance straight away after having hit the child. Nurse Jones, therefore, allows herself to take a short break, ignoring all the other unfortunate people with sad stories that populate the ER, and goes to the roof to get some fresh air.  
The sky is stormy, she can see clouds full of rain even in the dark: they’re heavy with smog and reflect the city lights with an orange glow that makes them look like burning embers. The wind ruffles her hair, sending it to whip her face.  
She welcomes the electric air and the fast approaching storm, they make her feel as if the sky was in accord with her inner turmoil. For a moment she can pretend the weather’s changing just as her mood, that the rain will come and wash away the dismay brought by the death of sweet, little and innocent Calvin...

“Was your ass forged by Sauron?” a voice asks, from somewhere behind her, “Because it looks precious!”.  
A soft chuckle, a scoffing sound. Nurse Jones sighs, ignoring the jingling in her ears and the series of cold chills running up and down her back.  
“No dirty pickup lines, Ben. I just sent your father into the afterlife”.  
“Huh…can’t say I’m sorry”.

Nurse Jones doesn't need to turn around to know that her three lifelong friends are there, making sure she’s fine. She does it all the same, and barely has time to see a reddish twirl before, not unlike how little Calvin has done just a couple of hours prior, Fulvius throws himself into her arms with a laugh that sounds euphoric. She holds to her bosom this child too, and buries her nose into his hair.  
“Hi, big one”.  
“Hello, little one. Don't listen to Dark and Handsome’s shitty jokes”.  
“As if yours were better!” mutters Turandot, coming to stand beside them; the blond nurse raises her head to search for her gaze, and when she finds it the woman’s somber ghost smiles at her with eyes full of fondness, stroking her cheek.  
“Hello, sweetheart”. Nurse Jones closes her eyes and leans into the other woman’s touch, answering in Chinese; the last ghost, the one who spoke to her first, catches up with them ignoring the squabble about comic skills muttered between his two peers, and gives her a somewhat worried look.  
“You okay?”.  
“Yes, just sad…and a little dazed by being here again. What about you?”. He shrugs.  
“Being an orphan is no news, to me”.  
“It's a shame. You’re such a handsome young man…a kind-hearted one, moreover. Any parent would be proud of you”.  
“Well, you’re the one who made me grow despite…well. Death” Ben says with a playful smile, throwing her a sideway glance. “Are **you** proud?”.  
“Yes. Yes, I am” the nurse answers, honestly. Ben’s face saddens, even though he keeps smiling, and he leans down to kiss her cheek.  
“Thanks…Marben”.


	2. 1 (I).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: Mentions of death, corpses and general gore...not in graphic detail, though.

“The Monopoly man’s dead” it’s how Lear wishes her a good morning on March 24th. How come she’s three days late, Marben can’t fathom.  
“I know. I've never yeeted someone to the other side faster than I did with him”.  
“Understandable. Here, have some breakfast” concludes Lear with a nonchalant air; she hands Marben a slightly sugared black coffee and a disposable tray, from under the lid of which a glazed doughnut peeks out. That’s how they exhaust all they have to say on the subject.

While Marben takes a bite off her doughnut, however, Lear puts the newspaper from which she learned of Sir Reginald Hargreeves’ death back on the bench and picks up a magazine, instead.  
“Anyway, you ever wonder what adult Luther may look like?”.  
“No. Why?”.  
“I bet he’s more or less like this”.  
A full-page photo of a tall, well-muscled guy, with a short beard, well combed hair and the oxymoronic attitude of the gentle alpha male is what the magazine’s cover consist of.  
Marben chuckles.  
“That’s Patrick, Allison’s ex husband. You met him”.  
“Your point being?”.  
“You really are an asshat, you know?”.  
“Hey, where do I fit? It's not as if I told your ‘friend’ to only date men that all look alike!”.  
“Allison and I are **not** friends”.  
“Yeah, as if!”.

And just like that, they take the road to the hospital, deeming themselves free to start their day as if the Hargreeves family was just a comic book's set of fictional characters.

-

The stream of curses is already out the meek looking nurse’s mouth as soon as the cubicle curtain gets firmly pulled aside. She doesn’t need to look the man in the face to give a name to the pile of leather and black cloth standing in front of her.  
“Whoa! Language, nurse Jones! What are these old geezers you try to resurrect all the time gonna think of you?” goes Diego, unexpectedly looking shocked to hear her cuss that viciously; the woman glares at him, letting the curtain go.  
“You're all wet and making a mess on ICU's floor, you genius. Are you trying to give me a heart attack too, by hiding behind curtains?”.  
“It's not my fault it's raining!”.  
“I swear, if you’re here just to be a nuisance I'll stick you in a bed, with a catheter up the wiener and an IV in the arm, oh so enjoying the show of your passing-out!”.  
“You can’t! It's illegal if I’m not ill!” the guy in leather blurts out, his bravado subsiding and giving way to badly concealed terror. The nurse’s eyes narrow in two slits.  
“Try me”.  
“Okay!” Diego says loudly, raising his hands up in surrender “Okay, I’m not here just to annoy you…even if you like it, when I do”.  
“No I don’t: we try to save human lives, in here, and unless you're on the verge of dying or a doctor, your presence is a hindrance to anyone! That's why I get pissed when you show up for no reason!”.  
“You have a point, but you’re glad to see me anyway”.  
“After you stole your father's autopsy report from the coroner, almost getting him fired in the process?”. Diego whitens and starts shamefully opening and closing his mouth without actually saying anything. “It’s at my own poor liver’s expense that I tolerate your bull, believe me”.  
“HA! I knew it!” the man chuckles grinning smugly; from one of the beds, a police officer with a lot of broken ribs and recently out of surgery recognizes him and waves.  
“Yo, man! Whatcha doin’ here?”.  
“Nurse Jones just said she likes me!”.  
“Not true, I’m only being nice because he’s about to get a lot of jabs!” the woman smiles at the policeman as she pushes the immature thirty-year-old into a corner and pulls a curtain behind them to get some privacy.

“Last chance, Diego, straight to the point or I'm getting a needle: what’s going on? Is it salmonellosis once again? We’ve already been through this, stop with raw eggs!” goes nurse Jones pointing a finger to his face, and Diego relents.  
“What? NO! Something I think you'd want to know happened…”. She just blinks at him. “Look, Mar-”.  
“ **Lola**!” Marben hisses, flustered, and Diego has the decency to look ashamed.  
“Shit, Lola! I meant to say Lola…sorry. It’s just that last time it was another name…” he mumbles, as they both glance around to see if anyone has heard him misspell. Needlessly so, since they’re hidden behind a curtain. “Anyway, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll be brutal: Five is back”.  
“What?”.  
“Five. He’s back”. Marben rouses from her stupor only to give him a glare, which makes him immediately understand what to do. “Okay, I’ll just shut up”.  
The blond nurse takes a moment to process, but despite it being good news, she almost gets overwhelmed by a powerful bout of revulsion and nausea.  
“I…I wasn't expecting this” she says eventually, and only because the situation requires for her to say something. Diego, bless his soul, must be thinking she’s in shock - not disgusted - and looks genuinely sympathetic as he lays a hand on her shoulder.  
“Neither were we”.  
“Heck, he reappears just in time for his father's funeral after sixteen years from going missing…what a drama queen…“.  
“Sure he is. And you haven't yet heard of the one suspecting one of us killed Dad!”.  
“Who the heck…” Marben makes to ask, but a pointed look from Diego serves her as well as a real answer. “Oh, yes. Loofah”.  
“Who else?”.  
“Is he okay?”.  
“Who, Luther?”.  
“ **Five** ”. Diego uncharacteristically blushes.  
“He seems to be in great shape…all in all. You know, snarky. Annoying. Arrogant”.  
“Did he say what happened to him?”.  
“Sort of, but it doesn’t really make sense. He just…went away on his own” Diego murmurs, giving her a pitying look to which Marben is so insensitive she completely ignores it and gets lost among the thousands of questions and emotions messing up with her head, heart and stomach respectively.  
“Will you come see him?”.  
“I can't, I have work” the nurse rebuffs. Then feels guilty and tries for something more conciliatory. “After all, what would you say to an ex you haven't seen in over sixteen years?”. Diego shrugs, and she sardonically sneers. “Spot on: nothing”.  
“Another time, then”.  
“Perhaps. Thanks anyway, Diego. And stay out of trouble, will you? You know I don’t like to patch you up more than Mom does”.  
“Trouble is my middle name, baby” he replies with a smirk, suddenly posing like a handsome, rogue hero or something like that, as if there was an imaginary camera in the ward. Marben’s having none of it.  
“Then find yourself a stage one. Better than ‘Kraken’, possibly!”.  
“We’ll see”.

With one last smile, Diego turns his back on her, pulls the curtain aside and heads for the door. Marben watches him go, as she wonders why politeness feels like a more pressing need than letting him go. She chooses to compromise with herself, and calls after him. He turns, looking inquisitive.  
“Er…I’m sorry your father died?” she says sounding highly dubious, with her face twisted into a strange grimace, the result of a contrite expression without feeling and a far too much sincere disgusted moue. Diego bursts into a thunderous and coarse laugh, and finally leaves.  
A moment later, the nurses station’s telephone rings, and Marben - back to being nurse Jones - picks it up.

“Yup?”.  
“Julia from ER, hi. Is Lola there?” a voice she doesn’t recognize asks.  
“That’s me, how can I help you?”.  
“Uhm…is the guy dressed in leather gone? You know, the one with the scarred cheekbone…”. Marben unconsciously scratches her own left cheek.  
“Ah, yes, don't worry, he has already left. No need to send up someone from secu-“.  
“No, actually...I wanted to ask, since you know him-”.  
“Nope, not gonna give you his number. And leave the line free for real urgencies” Marben bursts out, before forcefully hanging the phone up on Julia from ER. She’ll worry another time, about how much she’d like to see Diego date any other woman than Detective Patch. Now, she needs to go vomit.

-

That same night, Diego and Detective Patch meet again, and if Marben only knew she would probably have a disapproval-induced heart attack. Luckily, she’s not the nurse who gets sent along with the paramedics on the crime scene at Griddy’s Doughnuts.

“Here, Agnes, take a sip” Myery softly says, handing a glass of cold water and a paper napkin to the pink-clad waitress seated in a corner; Agnes takes them both, absently nodding, but does not drink. “Can I get you a blanket?”.  
“Oh, no…no, thanks…I-I’m okay” the lady stammers, with a not at all convincing little smile on her clammy face.  
“You sure?” the nurse tries once more, but the waitress just nods, already back to staring at the table in front of her with hollow eyes. “All right, I’m gonna go be a nurse, now. Call me if you need anything”.

Turning away from Agnes, Myery throws a disconcerted look at her surroundings, not exactly sure about what she’s supposed to be doing since everyone in the shop is dead, apart from her and the waitress who even refuses assistance: a man lays sprawled on his back over a coffee table, another one has bled out over the counter and the remaining two are on the floor, one of which with his neck bent in a disturbing way. The red-haired woman can’t be of any help, can’t even pronounce them because it takes a doctor to do so; yet, she proceeds as if first aid could still make a difference, although leisurely so. Myery snaps on a pair of latex gloves and quickly inspects the victims, checking for pulse and breathing, assessing the severity of each injury while waiting for the attending physician she’s on duty with to arrive. But in the end there’s not that much for her to do anyway, so, as she finishes examining the guy slumped onto the counter, the nurse resolves to throw in the towel and leave everything to the police.She just has the time to think Agnes’ shock must be more severe than it shows, since she didn't explain herself properly to 911 (after all, she requested an ambulance even though the whole, bleak affair is obviously coroner's competence) when a voice that sounds unknown to her speaks from up close.

“Messing with the evidence?”.  
Turning around with the force of a spinning top, Myery’s perfectly aware she must be looking as guilty as someone who’s been caught stealing. In front of her, Diego Hargreeves sneers in self-satisfaction. “Ha! Psyched you out!”.  
“I was checking the victims for pulse and breathing. And I’ve got gloves on” she innocently says, raising a hand to show him it’s covered. Diego frowns.  
“What for? If they didn't react at all when you leaned over them they’re obviously dead!”.  
It’s Myery’s turn to frown, and she does it out of annoyance.  
“It never hurts to be scrupulous. What are you doing here?”.  
“Working. I guess we can be considered colleagues…” Diego mumbles with half a smirk. Then, his face goes suddenly slack with what looks like surprise. “Wait, you’re…aren’t you Mar-“.  
“ **Lola** ” the red-haired nurse readily chastises, and Diego claps his hands in front of himself, looking like someone who’s about to start praying. Myery’s not entirely sure about what that gesture means, does he want to beg her not to go and tell he’s an idiot to everyone she’s gonna cross paths with?  
“Lola, right, **Lola** ’s cousin. Aren't you?” Diego clumsily asks, and as she nods, Myery is actually a bit disappointed in noting there’s no hidden meaning in his gesturing, that it’s just awkward randomness. “Wow…so you're the girl from that photo shoot with the riding crop and all that spandex…”.  
“Was this what you meant by 'colleagues’?”. Diego’s face instantly goes stony.  
“This is leather”.  
“Self defensive, I see. You’d like me to flog you, then?”. Myery puts on a smirk and steps into his personal space, hands on her hips, overtly checking him out; Diego fidgets and looks uncharacteristically shy, under her scrutiny, but she can tell he’s intrigued. “Oh, relax, it wouldn't work: from what my cousin tells me, you like women who are mean to you. And I’m not into that, nor…anything of the above”.  
The nurse drops the act; Diego makes to say something - probably object - but she doesn’t give him the time.  
“At any rate, I remind you that if you were to get caught snooping around in here, it would translate into serious trouble”.  
"I wear gloves too". As he says so, Diego fishes a pair of leather gloves from his pocket and waves them in front of her face.  
“But you’re not police, and if you were a paramedic I would have noticed…” counters Myery, snatching them out of his hand. Diego lunges to retrieve his gloves, but the red-haired woman slaps them onto her breasts, successfully discouraging him from trying again.  
“Oh come on, help me!”.  
“Fine, do as you please!” Myery eventually sighs, exasperatedly looking at the ceiling “But if you get busted, my name is never gonna get brought up. Understood?”.  
“Otherwise?” Diego defiantly asks, cocking an eyebrow. She radiantly smiles back at him, showing so many pearly whites he immediately knows it has to be a calculated action.  
“I’ll make you get charged with Obstruction of Justice, more precisely for Tampering and Spoliation of evidence”. At that, Diego boggles.  
“Hang on, I didn’t tamp-“.  
Before he can even finish the sentence, with a swift lunge of her wrist Myery tears a hair from his head and sticks it in the nose of the dead man lying on the counter, knowing full well Diego’s squeamish and will never muster the courage to touch a corpse. A truly bright premise for pursuing a career in the police.  
Diego jumps back with a yelp, giving her a horrified look; in her secluded corner, Agnes winces.  
“ **What the hell**?” the leather-clad Hargreeves blurts in a high-pitched voice.  
“Did I mention that, amongst many things, I have more than one degree?”.  
“…and the one not currently giving you a job is in, let me guess, ch-chemistry?”.  
“No, that’s my cousin's, I went to law school. So, be a dear and get lost as fast as you can…and I’ll remove your hair from this guy’s nose, since we both know you’re too much of a weakhearted to do it yourself”.  
Diego gets the hint and pales even more; Myery winks and tosses his gloves at him, before discarding her disposable ones.

Surprisingly, it works. With wide eyes Diego turns away and in complete silence goes straight to Agnes, getting maybe not lost but at least out of the way.  
Myery lets him depart a little before allowing herself to sigh in relief: with all the discretion she’s capable of, she adjusts under her jacket the gun stolen from the corpse on the counter, and then exits the doughnut shop.  
A group of onlookers has gathered a short distance from the ambulance, luckily they’re being kept at a safe distance from the yellow tape provided by the police - in the end, some of them deigned to join the ride.  
Myery pulls the tape up and passes underneath it, coming face to face with an imposing guy eating an ice cream: he promptly gives way, she acknowledges him with a nod and then makes for the nearest phone booth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone! Welcome, if this is your first time reading the series, and welcome back if you've already read 'By your window'! Either way, it's a pleasure to greet you :)
> 
> As promised, here's the sequel. This story will follow the events of Umbrella Academy's Season 1, it'll be shorter than 'By your window' but much more eventful, and definitely more gore-y: I'll make sure to let you know at the beginning of each chapter what you'll come across while reading, and I'll be posting only one per week.
> 
> Thank you all very much for the attention and feedback you already sent me after the uploading of Chapter O,  
> and a heartfelt thanks also goes to those who wrote or showed any kind of support to 'By your window', since July. You truly are awesome, and I love(d) to hear from you.  
> I hope you're all holding up as best as you can, during this disastrous year. Stay strong, and stay safe. 
> 
> Love


	3. 1 (II).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: vague descriptions of a crime scene, discussing firearms.

  
  
  
  
“Tacos or Shao Mai?”.  
“Tacos. And tomorrow Shao Mai”.  
“But tomorrow I’ve got the night shift…”.  
“I’ll order for two and eat everything myself, then”.  
“…wait a minute, didn’t you feel nauseous for the whole afternoon?”.  
“I deserve some comfort food, even if it means throwing it all up right after”.  
“And you need it tonight or tomorrow?”.  
“Both” Marben answers in a low tone, looking straight ahead at the red light; out of the corner of her eye, she can see that Diana is insistently staring at her, but doesn't feel like explaining what’s currently going through her mind. Not yet, at least.  
And she’s lucky, since she gets to avoid doing so while they’re still waiting for the light to turn green: a great bustle comes from the rear seat, one of the car’s windows gets quickly rolled down and a sudden scream takes by surprise the both of them. As well as the oblivious passerby who was blissfully minding his own business.

“Hey! HEY, YOU! I’VE BEEN KIDNAPPED! CALL MY BROTHER, DIEGO HARGREEVES, TELL HIM I DON’T KNOW WHERE THEY’RE TA-”.  
“KLAUS, IT’S ME!” Marben thunders, turning to look at the agitated, intoxicated human disaster clinging to the car’s window as Diana massages her ears. Marben whispers her real name through gritted teeth then, fearing Klaus wouldn’t otherwise recognize her, in his state. “I’m taking you home, shut the fuck up or you’ll get us in trouble”.  
“Oh. OH! HI, LITTLE MARBEN! I didn’t know you were back in town!” Klaus screams after a moment of confusion, and both the women in the car start to cuss and frantically look around, fearing someone might have heard him. “How come I didn’t recognize you?”.  
“You’re so stoned Mount Rushmore is getting envious, that’s why”.  
“Yeah, that plus his notorious, frankly desolating attention span” Ben grouches from the other side of the backseat, until that moment unseen by everyone but Marben, who pointedly ignores him.  
“This orange car is sooooo nice…does it come in pink, too?” Klaus queries, caressing the smooth leather upholstery as if it were a lover.  
“Ask Lear, she’s the one who insisted on taking this flashy thing at all costs or nothing else”.  
“Where did you find him?” Diana plaintively murmurs, as she watches Klaus throw himself down on the seat to rub against it like an overgrown cat looking for scratches.  
“ **He** ’s the one who keeps finding me!”.  
“So he came straight to you asking to be taken home?”.  
“Of course not, I saw him crying and hugging a hydrant while I was getting in line at Taco Bell…I couldn't leave him there! What would happen if he was to piss off someone dangerous?” Marben asks when her friend sends her a skeptical look; from the back, Klaus starts to whimper.  
“I was doing that because there was a guy dressed in black, with a hood on his head, pointing at me and bellowing ‘I am your father!’!”.  
At that, Marben averts her eyes from the street for a moment and glares at Ben through the rearview mirror. The ghost defiantly looks back.  
“What? Am I not entitled to pass the time a bit? The idiot’s so high he doesn't even recognize me, and he’s able to see me just because you’re around!”.  
“For Pete’s sake, your father just died!”.  
“I KNOW, I’VE BEEN TO THE FUNERAL!” comes in a screech from Klaus. Diana covers her ears again.  
“Chill, Klaus, I wasn’t talking to you. That was for…the angel on my shoulder, so to say”.  
“I’d very much prefer 'green fairy'. After all, not unlike absinthe, I’m inebriating and for connoisseurs” Ben ponders out loud.  
“You wish!” Marben barks, and this time Diana doesn’t hold back.  
“Ben?” she asks, but Marben nods without explaining further.  
In the backseat, Klaus burps loudly, and Diana finally turns to him, fed up.  
“Oi, Skywalker! Keep it in, if you feel like barfing! Mats are new”.

Half an hour later they finally reach the Umbrella Academy; Diana gets out of the car and retrieves Klaus from the backseat as Marben rings the bell. Nobody answers.  
“Oh well. You two wait, I'm going back to the car” she mutters nervously as Diana and Klaus reach the steps - Klaus has taken off his jacket and is twirling it over his head, as he half-nakedly dances on the sidewalk singing ABBA's Dancing Queen.  
“Never listen to me, eh?” Ben scolds from inside the car with a petulant voice and his head passing through the closed window. Klaus, however, abruptly sobers up and grabs Marben’s wrist.  
“No, wait, I'll try!" he slobbers, trying to stand up on his own: on unsteady legs and a straight back, he makes a show of noisily inhaling and then...  
“DIIIEEEEah, no, he went out…alright, then, LUUUU-". Two hands get slammed on his wide open mouth.  
“ **Klaus, what the fuck are you doing**?”.  
“Heck, man, it’s four in the friggin’ morning! Come on!”.  
Klaus mumbles something incomprehensible, so after a quick exchange of glances Marben and Diana decide to release him.  
“What are you two, pretty and helpless ladies, doing in the streets at this ungodly hour of the night?”.  
Diana opens her mouth and tries to answer - perhaps that he would do better to go call 'defenseless' one of his siblings at random, that what they do at night is not his fucking business at all, that they’re nurses and work very odd hours, or maybe even just to send him to go get screwed - but Marben interrupts her, with a murmur that sounds exhausted.  
“Klaus, please, just tell us you have the keys”.  
Something in Klaus’ mind clicks, and suddenly it’s like if he wasn’t high anymore. He approaches Marben and puts a hand on her shoulder.  
“What’s up, munchkin? Why are you looking so…wistful?”.  
‘ _I don't want to be here, I'm afraid I’ll stumble across your brother if I get too close…and the idea alone makes my skin crawl_ ’ she thinks.  
“I had a rough day and I’m very tired, that's all” it’s what she says. Behind her, Ben graciously keeps his mouth shut.  
And since Klaus may be noisy and theatrical but Marben has never seen him act overbearing, he nods and lets go, even if he keeps sending her small, worried glances.

“I’m not allowed to have the keys, Dad told Pogo to take them away from me after that time I came back to...huh...well, I was left without money, so…anyway, there’s no need for you to know, it was years ago!” he mumbles staggering down the steps, bypassing the gate and going to poke around in one of the ornamental pine trees’ vase, next to the door. After a few minutes, he raises his hand triumphantly in the air, showing two keys attached to a metal ring, and as he plays the fool he flips over on the sidewalk, pulling vase, pine and all the rest down with him, making a huge mess.  
“Gee, just open the door and get lost!” Marben whispers-shouts at him.  
“Hang on a minute, Imma call Lear to tell her we’re fine” Diana counters, hauling Klaus from the ground and dragging him to the door. They vanish inside the Academy before Marben can find the force to think of a reply.

“What **the hell** is wrong with your family?” she asks Ben when she lets herself unceremoniously fall behind the steering wheel.  
“I think it would be easier for you to say what's **not** wrong with them”.  
“How was the funeral?”.  
In the rearview mirror, she sees the childlike flash going through her ghost friend’s eyes.  
“Pretty enjoyable, you know? I mean, the mess that could have easily been expected, but I had good fun. Luther scattered Dad's ashes saying that ‘it would have been better with some wind’…”.  
“Sure, all that stuff would have ended up in your siblings’ eyes making them cry for a week!” Marben interrupts him, and they share a heartfelt, thunderous laugh.  
“Hang on, you still haven’t heard the highlights! Luther and Diego didn’t miss the chance to throw hands, Mom kept asking what were we doing, my statue got beheaded, Five…”.  
Ben stops abruptly. The smile slips away from Marben's face, who looks at his reflection with a betrayed expression, as if she hadn't expected he would have said that name.  
Immediately, Ben backpedals and tries to lift the mood.  
“Klaus put out his cigarette into the pile of Dad's ashes”.  
“Well…at least he didn’t try to snort them…”.

Diana’s brusque return interrupts them.  
“Lear says Myery called home: we need a plan” she breathlessly says, slamming the door shut, and Marben boggles.  
“What?”.  
“There’s been a shooting at Agnes’ workplace. Myery got there with the ambulance: she says there are four men equipped as snipers, all dead, no one knows who killed them…and they don’t look like anyone we were expecting”.  
“Shit…we just…how are we gonna do?” Marben whispers in dismay. She thought they would have had more time...  
“How’s Lear? And how-“.  
“Peachy, all of them. Relax”. Diana reaches out and grabs her hand, squeezing it. Marben gives her a grimace of a smile.  
“Easier said than done”.  
“Just keep calm. You want me to drive?”.  
“No…I’m fine”.  
“You sure?”. Diana watches as Marben nods. “Okay. Let's go home then. And when Myery ends her shift and comes home as well, we’ll think of something”.  
“Assuming we’ll still be alive”.

-

At dawn, Myery returns home. The Girls are indeed still alive and waiting for her, Diana curled up on an armchair and with an unknown cat blissfully purring in her lap, Marben on the sofa - thus giving her back to the door - Lear standing by the window, dying to smoke a cigarette.  
Unseen or ignored, Turandot, Fulvius and Ben stand by the fireplace, sending worried glances at the women’s tense faces.

Without saying a single word, Myery takes off her jacket, kicks off her shoes, unties her ponytail. She lets her calm and measured gestures speak on her behalf, and the others immediately sense the threat is real, but for now not too close: Diana sighs and resumes caressing the smug cat, Marben averts her gaze and leans her head a little, looking at her own lap. Lear, however calm she may be, maintains a slightly impatient demeanor, because she hasn’t let herself have a smoke all night, and until Myery doesn't spill the beans, she dares not to.

“So?”.  
Giving a look of warning to the blond woman by the window who’s toying with her unlit cigarette, Myery simply steps forward, flanks the sofa and under everyone’s gaze draws something from the small of her back, openly showing it. An unknown gun.  
“Shit” murmurs Diana, covering her mouth while looking at the weapon with puzzled eyes. She does not know, but Ben and Fulvius also just muttered a soft curse.

“Is that…”.  
“A guest, directly from the crime scene. I managed to snatch it while Patch was questioning Agnes and Beaman was busy paling in front of a victim who got stabbed in the groin”.  
Beside the fireplace, Ben cups his jewels with a horrified face, probably as traumatized as poor Beaman was at the crime scene; Lear leisurely comes forward, to approach her red-haired friend and inspect the gun, although without picking it up.“I confirm, doesn’t look like Uruk’s stuff” she declares after a while. Fulvius giggles at the nicknames, and Turandot gives him the evil eye. Marben, instead, throws a fleeting glance Ben, who still hasn’t recovered from his shock, and thinks it’s ironic that he’s in no mood to gloat about the Middle Earth-related codenames, since he’s been the one to suggest them long ago.  
Myery’s grimace looks pained.  
“We’re screwed, then, because it means it’s somebody else’s!”.  
“So we basically earned another problem?” asks Diana, sounding halfway between worried and pondering. “Have you called Andrea? Maybe the Office can give us some answers…”.  
“No. I mean, **yes** I called, **no** they know nothing about the dead guys. Crap, I don’t like being in here already, this is the lousiest hideout ever!” Lear whines, and Myery chides her once again.  
“Would you rather go back to prison like when we were twenty-two, then?”.  
“Whoever those guys were, it can't be we were their intended targets…otherwise they would have come straight to look for us, not stopped for coffee” Marben ponders in a thin voice, ignoring everyone. Myery must realize her cousin is worried, because she places the stolen gun onto the coffee table and sits beside it. Cautiously, as if approaching some skittish animal.  
“It doesn’t change anything, in the end” Lear cuttingly suggests, understanding where Marben’s train of thought is leading. “If they were after someone else that got the upper hand, they could decide to turn against us anyway, in case they got a whiff of our scents. Still one more problem than what we had anticipated. A big one”.  
“So what do we do? We’re prepared for the Uruks, but not for this new problem, let alone facing them all at once...we should lea-”.  
“We can’t” Myery readily dismisses her cousin, sounding adamant; Lear, however, seems to be on the warpath, and turns a defiant look on her.  
“Right, because you say so?”.  
“Because you three are indebted, and the least we can do is to answer a call for help from those who saved your lives!” the red-haired woman states, Marben’s and Diana’s gazes ricocheting from her to the other woman and vice versa.  
“Following what the gravedigger said concerning a note and some vague memories of a bad LSD trip?” Lear scoffs.  
“ **Gravedigger**?” Diana asks, looking genuinely at a loss; eyes fixed on her, Lear nods her head toward Marben and mimes a tie, a long coat and a smooch. The other woman’s face makes itself knowing, so Marben intervenes before her friends’ little sideshow may completely overshadow the real problem.  
“A **shared** LSD trip, yes: how high are the chances of it not having been real, if three of us remember it? Not to mention the scars it left”.  
Unsurprisingly, that manages to suffocate every controversy, make silence fall, and reignite everybody’s focus once again: the Girls exchange a round of meaningful glances, as the three ghosts look at them with concern and something akin to nervousness, and then Lear lowers her gaze, Myery nods.

“I think…we could risk to wait a few hours, before deciding whether to leave or not” Diana tentatively offers after a bit. A pause, and then Lear speaks in such a tone as to make every present individual - alive or otherwise - feel idiotic.  
“Are you serious?”.  
Diana hurries to explain.  
“Look, being in the eye of the storm it’s damn scary, I’ll give you that…but we got work to do, and unless we manage an invisible escape we’ll attract the attention of anyone dangerous in our immediate vicinities: do we really want to take the risk? I’d hate to delude anyone, but...maybe those men weren’t here for us, as Marben suggested. If that was the case, it's not your problem, let's forget it and get ready for the Uruks that will undoubtedly arrive”. “Makes sense” Marben acquiesces with a nod and a glower, which is not addressed to Diana but to the whole, troublesome situation. “So we try and keep a low profile while, and in the meantime we hope who killed the poor sods at Griddy’s won't turn against us?”.  
“No, we investigate. It could buy us some time. If the snipers were after someone else their employer will never know we’re here” Myery chimes in, professing to agree. From the other side of the room, Lear huffs, out of frustration.  
“We're risking everything for a stupid matter of honor”.  
“It’s not stupid. You wouldn’t be here, had that LSD trip gone differently…and your family would be dead” Myery retaliates, but both their voices are devoid of animosity.  
“Right now, this is paradoxically the safest place in the world for us to be” Diana adds.  
Lear’s face does something ugly and she appears to be on the verge of retorting: Marben suspects to know exactly what, but her friend unexpectedly grits her teeth and looks away, eventually choosing to give up once and for all, and slipping the cigarette between her lips she grouches a ‘whatever’.  
“Since we have no other choice” Myery tells her, and it’s as if she managed to infuse the whole group with her same quiet sense of finality.  
“Doesn’t surprise me, to be honest. This is what is gained from associating with shitty people”. Lear puts on a fake pensive expression. “It must be this damn city’s fault, this is where we had to stand for ourselves for the first time…”.  
“…and now that we're back, it starts all over again. **This** _,_ also, makes sense” ironically snorts Myery.  
The Girls share a bitter laugh which surprisingly manages to relieve a bit of the tension; then Lear goes to smoke at the bathroom’s window, like she was used to do in secret when they were in high school. Diana makes to put the cat down and get up as well, but Myery holds her back with a question.

“Who’s that?”.   
“Neutered, long-haired tabby with white spots, well groomed and well fed, wearing a tag that sa-”.  
“Duh, I can see all that by myself. I asked ‘who’, not ‘what’”. Diana shrugs, not dropping her innocent act.  
“I've been leaving him food outside the window for days…last night Lear forgot it was open and he simply came in. We figured he could stay…”.   
“Don’t let him grow too attached” Myery admonishes; between them, Marben clears her throat, and her cousin immediately backpedals. “Unless you wanna throw him out! I'm sure he would understand, were we forced to evict him, after all we already have two dogs…”.  
“Myery, you really think I could ever be the kind of person who throws a cat out? Seriously!” Marben replies, irked, and for a moment Myery finds herself trapped between her cousin’s disapproving glance and the distraught one Diana’s sending from the couch. When she lowers her eyes, she even catches the cat’s ones, vertical pupils triumphantly gazing at her from the privileged position of a freeloader who's dozing on the athletic thighs of a tall and pretty blond. She figures he has already won.  
“All right, he stays. But don't let him meet the dogs, the last thing we need are some Hanna and Barbera style antics! And you get to be the one who explains why he can't come with us, when we leave!” Myery eventually acquiesces, vaguely gesturing to the sofa on which Marben is curled-up. Diana sticks her tongue out, puts the purring cat onto the armchair and then pads across the room, murmuring something about ‘calling her favorite bookworm'. A moment later, she has disappeared into her bedroom, the phone’s long, thin black cord tucked under the door.

“Back to us…the plan’s risky but clever, I think. We only have to get Lear to think so as well” Myery tells her cousin, shaking her head, eyes still glued on Diana’s closed door.  
“She’s grateful about having being saved, in her own way, and knows she cannot walk away from this…it’s just that she’s struggling to find reasons to go on, after what…happened to Brad” Marben calmly says, turning impossibly sad eyes onto her cousin, who suddenly feels her brown ones prickle. “I understand her. I know how it feels”.  
To keep herself from tearing up, Myery grabs the blanket’s corner and arranges it better into her cousin’s arms.  
“Everything’s gonna be alright. You’ll see” she says, in a tone that's meant to sound reassuring, but that she couldn't say to whom of the two it’s addressed.  
“Must to” Marben whispers, burying her nose into the soft tufts of brown hair that crown the toddler’s head and lightly squeezing him to her chest, while her blue-green eyes run across the little girl asleep beside her, sweet little head resting on her thigh.


	4. 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: Mentions of blood, injury and corpses (nothing graphic).

  
  


“Klaus, get a move on!” Ben hisses like an angry cat, glaring daggers at his unruly brother who’s dragging his feet. And just like a disgruntled child who’s forced to behave, Klaus gets whiny.  
“Jesus, why don’t you shut up? Seriously, you have no idea how un-comfy the old man's clothes feel!”.  
“Those are not uncomfortable, just proper”.  
“What? What do you mean, ‘proper’?”. Klaus brings a hand to his chest, looking outraged.  
“‘Naked man coming!’ was your leitmotiv, when we were kids. You used to scream it while running around the house as naked as a worm, and more than twenty years later looks like you have to outgrow the phase yet, since you roam the streets with your belly out, barefoot, wearing see-through shirts and pants that barely cover your privates. If ‘half naked’ is your normal, it’s only logical for you to feel strange once fully dressed!”.  
“You’re mean” accuses Klaus, now sounding heartbroken, “I really don't understand why you’d want to do this to your poor, helpless brother…”.  
“Yeah, as if!” Ben tries to stop him with an eye roll, but to no avail.  
“…who tries his best to be himself despite life being so hard on him…”.  
“You’re the most unfortunate of all, sure”.  
“…and is now trapped into someone else's gloomy, banal, constricting clothes. Can't you see it, hermano querido? I’m a colorful butterfly, and right now I feel pierced by a pin and framed!” Klaus concludes with a twirl that upsets his balance and sends him straight to crash into a garbage can. Ben doesn’t notice until the clang of the metal lid falling to the ground interrupts him.  
“You know what? Keep going on, everyone already believes you’re crazy, watching you talk out loud to yourself. The butterfly part is the least of your pro- **Klaus, what the hell**?”.  
“I swear, you Hargreeves keep coming at me like fucking golden retrievers” a familiar voice disapprovingly points out. The two brothers turn abruptly and find themselves face to face with a frowning Marben, arms crossed over her chest.

“Oh…you took me to little Marben!” Klaus joyfully chirps, widely smiling as he claps his hands. Ben looks at him first and then at the woman, at a loss.  
“‘Little’?”.  
“Klaus, for the umpteenth time, I’m older than you. And my name is Lola” the blond woman grumbles while Klaus wraps himself around her like a badly dressed, blood-stained creeper.  
“But you’re teensy-weensy!”.  
“Just shut the fuck up!” Ben barks out then. Feeling tired despite being dead and technically immune to fatigue, he sighs and rubs his eyes; once he manages to quell down his anger a bit he turns to his startled friend. “Marben, please, ignore him…and…give his forehead a look, maybe?”.  
“Oh…so that’s what brings you two here!” sniggers the woman. Both Hargreeves look at her with a baffled face.  
“Yes…what did you think?”.  
“That you were here to try and coax me into coming to your house, as Diego did yesterday…”.  
“Diego’s been here?” Ben frowns.  
“Yes, but I’m not coming to see Five. Now, Klaus, let me have a look…”.  
Marben takes Klaus’ hand and makes to lead him toward the ER’s entrance, but deciding he wants to sow some more discord, he stomps his feet and sends his brother an hostile look.  
“I won't let you treat me, if he stays!”. Both the ghost and the nurse try to reply, but Klaus doesn’t let them. “He said I’m shabby! ME!”.  
“Would you call me a liar?” Ben asks directly to Marben, for the first time deliberately ignoring Klaus. His friend, however, isn’t willing to stand with him.  
“Ben, sometimes you’re as sour as a dried-out, old spinster” she accuses him in no uncertain terms.  
“Well, I don't see a ring on your finger either, sis!”.  
Marben takes a deep breath and gives Ben a warning glare; the ghost is more than aware he has gone too far, but defiantly looks back nonetheless.  
“Anyway, stop being so cranky or we'll start thinking you don't love us”.  
“If you don't go away of your own accord, I'll have to make you” it’s all the blond woman has to say, in a calm tone that brooks no arguments, not unlike that of a mother who does not accept hysterics from her temperamental child, and a moment later Ben turns his back on her and Klaus, gradually fading away as he angrily walks down the alley from which he arrived in his brother’s company.

“You have to teach me how to do that. What's your secret?” Klaus whispers in awe, while Marben sighs in relief and convinces herself she’s acquiring skills for when her children will be teens.  
“Rock salt, iron…”.  
The loudest of the Hargreeves turns an odd look on her, probably trying to figure out if she’s making fun of him.  
“Hey, I’m trying to be serious, here”.  
“What makes you think I wasn’t?”.  
“You know, what just happened reminds me of a strange thing I overheard last night, before stumbling upon you and…your friend, whatever name she goes by, now: passing under a window in what I believe to be Vanya’s neighborhood, I heard two people heatedly arguing about one of them being covered in blood. A woman was yelling something the likes of 'I thought you said there was nothing illegal about this!’, to which someone replied 'And I thought you understood I was lying!’…dunno, must have been a mother and her wayward son…or two lovers giving period sex a go…”.  
“Charming”.  
“Their voices sounded strangely familiar, though…”.  
Ignoring her patient’s rumbling, the nurse grabs him by the arm and drags him onto the emergency room’s table.  
“So, are you gonna tell me what happened to your forehead? Make it short, please, I was going to lunch”.  
“Oh, this!” Klaus absent-mindedly gestures at his own head. “I smashed one...one of those glass balls with fake snow inside against it!”.  
“…what an elaborate turn of phrase just to say 'snow globe’. It’s a globe, it’s full of fake snow: **snow globe** ”.  
“It didn't occur to me, dear teacher!”.  
“Thank goodness I was never your teacher, since you appear to think the head is only useful for keeping the ears apart and for breaking things. What exactly made you believe it would have been a good idea?”. Klaus shrugs.  
“I extemporize, you know how I am”.  
Marben removes all the glitter she can from the wound, then whirls around and opens several drawers, eventually fishing some small bottles and cotton from the third one. After unscrewing a bottle’s cap, she spills some of its content on the cotton and starts gently dabbing at Klaus’ forehead, as he swings his feet like little Calvin used to, but unlike the boy also making faces for the unpleasant, stingy sensation.  
“If you get bored I can find you a job as a bedpan washer...this probably is not the best place in the world, for you to work in, full of ghosts as it is, but we always seem to be short of orderlies, and even when high you should be able to tell if a bedpan is clean or not!”.  
“I didn't do it out of boredom, Five offered to pay me!” Klaus whines, and then shuts up immediately, eyes as wide as saucers and hands flying to cover his incorrigible mouth. He expects Marben to burst into tears, get tremendously pissed off or ask him never to talk about Five again. Instead she surprises him, and after a brief moment of impasse she innocently asks him a question.  
“…he offered to pay for you to smash a boule-de-neige on your head?”. As if on second thought, she gives him a good look and recants. “No, wait. Leave it. I’m sure I don't wanna know”.  
“Boule-de-neige à vous, madame, anyway”.  
Marben just grabs a tube of surgical skin glue and resumes working.

“So. You see them too” offers Klaus after a brief pause, offhandedly. Marben doesn’t stop gluing, but lowers her eyes a little to give him a puzzled look.  
“Yeah. You really wanna talk about this in the middle of a crowded ER?”.  
Klaus makes a face.  
“For the first time since we met I'm sober enough to have a serious conversation and you try to dismiss me like that? Come on, what else can you do? You know, we ‘Umbrella Kids’ are awfully hard to kill, in addition to our official powers...and Diego also seems to resist like a loooooot underwater! Do you have any other special skills?”.  
“Apart from cooking too well? No, I just…just see ghosts and talk with them. I can touch them too”.  
“Oh?” Klaus chuckles, giving her a surprised and somewhat naughty look.  
“No, you idiot, not in a sexual way! Stop looking at me like that!”.  
“Sorry, sorry...it’s just that...I don't know, thinking it’s actually possible to touch them freaks me out…how can you not be upset by it?”.  
Marben closes the tube of skin glue and looks down for a moment, as if pondering what to say. As a matter of fact, there’s nothing to ponder.  
“I don’t fear them, never had. I didn’t even had to get used to it, just comes naturally…so they come to me and at times linger a bit…to get some company, I guess. They’re extremely lonely, and come and go as they please, some times telling names and stories, and others hardly even speaking…”.  
“Then your power is useless. But al least you get a little silence!” sentences Klaus at that point, sounding a tad disappointed. “Oh my god, think what Dad's face would have looked like if he only found out!”.  
Marben doesn’t wish to talk about Arsegreeves and what his obsession with people with superhuman powers had done to her. So she huffs a bitter laugh and takes the conversation back on safe land.  
“Believe it or not, I would give up this ability right away if I only could” she confesses, self deprecatingly.  
“No, hang on...keep it. I'd be glad to see you, if I died” Klaus replies in a low, kind voice, and giving her a fond smile; despite all her concerns, Marben finds herself faintly reciprocating, and placing a hand on his cheek she stands on her tiptoes to gently kiss the unblemished side of his forehead. Unfortunately, the gesture cannot have the same healing effect it has on ghosts. Marben is, however, happy to have given that kiss, because she knows that Klaus has received very little love, during his life.

The sweet moment is interrupted by a loudly rumble that forces both the nurse and the badly dressed guy to look down at his belly.  
“Klaus, how long has it been since you last ate?”. One more time, he shrugs.  
“A while…I had brea-no, I took a bite last night…damn, I skipped both meals! I haven't eaten since yesterday, at lunch! And that little fuck of your boyfriend hasn’t even paid me, how am I supposed to get me some food?”.  
“We haven’t been together for more than sixteen years and you still call him my boyfriend?” Marben asks him, eyebrows raised in an air of general disdain. Whatever Klaus is about to answer, however, she doesn’t stay to hear it. “Wait here. Without touching **anything** ” the nurse grumbles, before crossing the ER and leaving.  
The hope that Klaus for once will listen to her and do not get into trouble accompanies her up to the locker she left her bag in and then all the way back.  
When she gets to the ER once again, Klaus is miraculously still on the table, arms crossed over his chest, still swinging his feet and looking bored.  
“Here, have these, rockstar”.  
At the sight of the two homemade sandwiches inside the paperbag, Klaus’ eyes turn watery.  
“Oh, little Marben…how are you gonna do, if you give me your lunch?”.  
“I'll be fine, don’t worry” she brushes him off, already absorbed into putting away what she hasn’t used to medicate his wound.  
“…you don’t happen, by chance, to have twenty bu-”. Marben turns around with the force and speed of a spinning top.  
“NO. Eat, and if you wanna buy drugs do it with your blasted father's money!”.  
“Ugh, what a drag! All I do, today, is hearing I have to stay sober!” Klaus complains with a moue. Marben just gives him a foul look and shoves him off the table; he ungracefully stumbles over his own feet.  
“Yes, life sucks sometimes, I know. Now go home and don't tell anyone I'm in town, I’ve already had enough of you Hargreeves!”.  
“And what do I do with this wound? What did you put on it?”.  
“Skin glue, it’s like a healing tattoo: don't scratch it, don't wash it with soap, pat it dry, don't put ointments or plasters on it. In a few days, it will crust and fall”.  
“Oh, in that regard, did you see these?”. Klaus enthusiastically shows her the palms of his hands, which are tattooed with the words 'HELLO' - on the right - and 'GOOD BYE' - on the left. "I love them. They hurt a damn freaking lot, but were totally worth it! You have some brilliant ideas, from time to time, you know?".  
Marben doesn’t know whether to be flattered by the compliment, exasperated for having inadvertently and indelibly influenced poor Klaus’ fickle mind with something she’s done years prior without putting much thought in it, or to feel saddened by the memory that the lettering on his left hand evokes with arrogance.  
“You’re…so sweet. Truly. Now, get the hell outta here! Ciao!”.  
With that, Marben forcefully shoves Klaus out of the ER - pointedly ignoring all his protests - and turns to give her surroundings a look.

“The fuck Imma eat, now?”.

-

The answer comes to Marben in the somewhat pretentious guise of an old - and on her part only superficial - acquaintance.

“Marben?”.  
She can't help the force of habit from kicking in: she jumps back, whirling around, right hand going to the small of her back as the left comes between her and the newcomer.  
In front of her stands a young woman with Asiatic features, clad in the kind of clothing Marben's Father, who is more than twice their age, would be enthusiast of; she's holding the handle of a bright blue, rigid, shiny violin case, and the nurse feels under the impression to know her, but her mind isn’t being helpful…  
“I’m Helen! Helen Cho! We went to school together!” the stranger enthusiastically fills in, seemingly not bothered in the slightest by the impasse, even if a little taken aback by Marben’s defensive stance. That's when the blond woman recalls she never payed the other’s damn name - or general existence - much attention. Awkward.  
“Oh...yes, right. Sorry, it was so many years ago…howdy” she clumsily answers, extending a hand; Helen dodges it and goes straight for a hug.  
“It’s great to see you again! But what are you doing here?” she asks, drawing back just enough to shoot the question right in her face; Marben sees the other woman’s smile become embarrassed and guesses her dislike for intrusiveness must be showing. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to come off as rude, just…the other day I saw you on Allure, and now you’re at the hospital...are you sick?”.  
“No, I’m currently working here” Marben offers, aiming for good-natured even if she’s feeling like running away. “You know, **for charity** ”. No use in letting a complete stranger know anything.  
“Oh, you’ve got such a kind heart!” Helen unsuspectingly coos, grabbing the blond woman’s hands and squeezing them, looking at her as if she was Mother Teresa.  
“Well, I do what I can…”.  
“Don’t be modest, I know you like to expend yourself for good causes, like that benefit when we were at School, your first time as First Chair!”.  
Helen seems fiercely determined to act like nothing could ever change her mind about how close her and Marben are. And that’s precisely what gives the nurse an idea.  
“First and only, actually. I gave up with the violin, that year…never played again, not even once” she murmurs, making her voice and face to express dejectedness. It works like a charm, the other woman goes in full pitying mode right away.  
“It really was a shame! I recall you started refusing to play…you never told me why”.  
‘ _That’s because we're not friends’_ thinks Marben, inside her head’s privacy, _‘And I'm gonna start to shamelessly lie in 3, 2-_ ’.  
“I was going to grab something to eat, actually. Wanna join me and…tell me about it?”.  
The blond nurse gives the other woman a sad, hopeful lie of a smile and nods.  
“Yeah, sounds like a plan. Meanwhile, you may want to start calling me Lola…”.

-

That night, in the hospital’s morgue, Diana finds herself staring at the corpse of a round man who used to be in his fifties and now lies on a table, strewn with severe electrical burns and evident signs of torture. As she watches it, she feels nauseated and sore. Then she shakes off the feeling and goes to find someone who can give her more intel.  
Once she finds the assistant coroner, she introduces herself as Bette - the name she goes by at the hospital - and coquettishly asks about the circumstances of the discovery. Luckily for her, she doesn't have to strive too much, because besides blond hair and blue eyes, he’s also interested in gossiping.  
‘ _I shouldn't know this, Bettie, but my friend Rodriguez is with the police, and he told me that Syd...I mean_ _ **the body**_ _, was found into the garage he used to work at, with cables from a battery attached to his ears, chains holding him up by the wrists and feet soaking into a basin full of water’.  
_Diana doesn't need to know anything more, and neither does Bette; with an excuse, they both slip away and run to make a phone call to inform the Girls.

Almost simultaneously, a radio stolen from the police and currently residing on their flat’s mantlepiece, croaks about shots fired at 6045 Vanderbilt, more precisely at Gimbel Brothers’ department store.

-

“Delores” whispers a boy in shorts and knee-length stockings, pointing a flashlight ahead. He smiles like a fool and sports languishing eyes.  
“ _Oh_. _You_ ”.  
“It’s good to see you. I’ve missed you…obviously”.  
“ _Shut your face, little shit. You left me alone to rot in hell to go gallivanting with that chanteuse in red stilettos!_ ”.  
“Well, huh…it’s been a rough…couple of days”.  
A moment later, the boy’s eyes are following something in the distance and his face slacks in horror, before letting out a loud cry.  
“NO!”. 

  
Two suits with masks on top start shooting up the place, coming forward; the boy just has time to crouch and dash to his left before a mannequin gets hit in his place.  
“Shit, it’s them!” he cusses, peeking from behind a clothes rack.  
“ _Oh, well...I didn't need them, no. Legs are so much overrated, anyway…_ ”. The boy defies the bullets and runs to grab the half mannequin on the floor: she’s lost her wig and hat, as well as both legs, and even an arm. The right one. He drags her behind the clothes rack and gives her a purposeful stare.  
“I’ll be right back for you”.  
“ _You’d better do it for real, this time!_ ” she screams back, but he’s already gone, running who knows where in those ridiculous shoes that make his feet look huge and are also noisy as fuck.

“ _Great! He disappears for years, then comes back, gets me maimed and now sticks me into a sack! Never wise to get back with an ex!_ ” she grouches when the boy drags her close, stuffing her into a duffel bag and fulfilling his promise as best as he can.

Lots of shots, several vicious curses and a couple of failed jumps later, he allows her to peek from inside the duffel bag: they’re hidden behind the cash registers. The boy looks exhausted, sweaty and in pain, as he gives her what he must consider a reassuring look and brushes a thumb over her wrist.  
“ _Lovey-dovey stuff won’t get you anywhere. The hand I have left is still good enough to slap your traitorous face_ ”.  
He looks ahead and sighs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone! I hope you're all doing fine :)
> 
> How are you finding the plot, so far? I promise that if something doesn't seem to make sense, right now, it will eventually explain itself as the story unfolds!  
> As you may have noticed, I'll spell 'Delores' with a E, throughout the whole story, because I genuinely thought that's how she was being called, but also selfishly because I like it better than the other way. As simple as that.  
> Are you happy to see I made her an active part of the story?
> 
> I wish to thank you all very much for the lovely attention you're giving to this new fic and also to 'By your window', once again! You're adorable, almost as much as Baby Yoda (yes, I refuse to call him by his true name. He will always be 'baby', to me)...but not exactly that much. Because let's be honest, HAVE YOU SEEN HIM?? Thank you so much.
> 
> Love.


	5. 3 (I).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: Mentions of torture, death of a child and corpses. Nothing graphic.

  
  
  
  
“…what? Here? I’m not getting married here, I hate this sodding city!” Myery huffs with a little, outraged laugh, interrupting the scavenge of the drawer. Whatever gets said from the other side of the handset doesn’t appease her, because she rolls her eyes and puffs out her cheeks. “Look, rather than that I'll agree to marry you into a basement in the presence of just your friends and the Girls, as you suggested right after popping the question. Who d’you wanna call, to minister, the tacky chick who makes goo-goo eyes at your crazy brother?”.  
“Ugh, I’m **so** not seeing that hag ever again! If she comes to the wedding you’re short of a maid of honor!” enthusiastically states Marben, slamming the iron onto the board and pointing a peremptory finger at her cousin. Myery just waves a hand in the air, not even looking at her, and fishes a stack of magazines from the drawer, starting to sort it.  
“Because when she talks like that she doesn't make Jimmy's wacko brother seem rightly mentally centered, no no”. From the couch, Lear watches the red-haired woman take on lively chatting about centerpieces and floral decorations. “Why do they even call each other so often for, if they don't wanna have sex over the phone?”.  
Between a puff of steam from the iron and a creak from the board, Marben gives her a meaningful yet indulgent look.  
“Don’t be an ass”.  
“Yes, sure, be mean to me like you always do…” Lear mumbles, letting herself fall backwards, disorderly taking up all the couch. The other woman, carrying a pile of ironed and folded clothes, approaches and pats her on the knee, motioning to swap places.  
“It’s already worrying enough for you to be so obsessed with my love life, you wanna start doing the same thing with Myery’s, now?”.  
“I don’t trust Jimmy” Lear says shrugging a shoulder; she reaches out to take a pair of jeans from the pile of clean laundry, spreads it out onto the board and then starts ironing.  
“You never trust **any** of our SOs, if it comes to that…”.  
“I’m not envious, or living vicariously, if that’s what you’re trying to imply”.  
“Good. Because as you know, my love life is even more miserable than yours”.  
The look Lear turns to give her friend is impossibly sad; Marben doesn’t look upset, but the other woman knows she’s only steeled herself to appear collected as her heart bleeds. She identifies in Marben’s pain, it’s the same as her own…even if Lear supposes Marben’s must be twice as strong.  
As it’s already happened on many occasions, during their strange lives spent side by side, they think they’re extremely similar despite being unequivocally different, and somehow both women feel like some kind of comfort is passing through the link created by their gazes, to be shared.  
A moment spent in silent contemplation, and then the bubble bursts.

“Mommy?”.  
Myery jolts and turns to her right, bridal catalogs slipping from her lap and tumbling onto the floor as her chit-chatting gets quieter; just out of the door leading to the bedrooms, Marben’s little girl is rubbing her eyes with small fists, red and white pajamas askew on her slim body, her wavy, brown pixie cut reduced to the world’s worst case of bed head.  
“Gracie!” Lear rejoices. Abandoning the ironed laundry onto the coffee table, Marben rapidly crosses the foyer and crouches in front of her daughter, prying a small hand away from her face.  
“What are you doing up so early, dear? Did you have a nightmare?”.  
Grace, through and through looking like she’s still sleeping, shakes her head and wavers a bit; her mother supports her, sighing in relief.  
“Davie wet my bed”.  
“Oh my…”.  
With a small laugh and a swish of long blond hair, Lear joins them and starts straightening the kid’s pajamas.  
“Go, I'll take care of this little nugget” she whispers at Marben, before leading her sleeping niece back to bed. “Come, Gracie, let's go lie down for a little bit more”.  
With yet another sigh, Marben unplugs the iron and makes for the door. Her cousin - still sitting on the cabinet next to the door and never having stopped talking on the phone - intercepts her and slams a folded newspaper onto her stomach as she passes by.  
“Ouch!” goes the blond woman, and ripping the newspaper form the other’s grasp she reaches out to pull Myery’s hair in retaliation.  
The insults follow her through the door and the corridor, as she quickly flips through the paper’s pages.

In the kids’ bedroom, David is very much awake and enjoying a bit of a stretch onto his sister’s bed, chubby hands firmly holding on equally chubby toes.  
“Ma-maaah” he coos with a joyful smile when Marben switches on the bedside lamp, attracting his attention. She smiles back, and bends down to smack a big kiss onto his cheek.  
“Hello, sweetie. Come on, let me clean you up”.  
The toddler lets himself be picked up and moved to the changing table without making a fuss. Marben then proceeds to strip him of the whimsical onesie in yellow, orange and blue stripes - kind of an eyesore, but she loves it: it used to belong to one of her brothers - and the bodysuit underneath, both drenched.  
“Better leave a diaper on, at night…just in case” she mumbles, lost in thought. David babbles something unintelligible, and Marben fights tooth and claw against the instinct to blow a raspberry onto his inviting tummy. She doesn’t want to excite him too much, he may still feel like going back to sleep…  
“Keep that tiny willy down, maybe he has more to unload!” whimpers a terrified Fulvius, appearing on the other side of the room with the usual ringing that only Marben can hear. He's shielding himself with his pale, little hands, wide open and outstretched as he stares at David as if he were a time bomb.  
Marben just gives him a playful look and snorts.  
“What are you scared of, big one? It wouldn't hit you anyway! And are you seriously trying to teach me how to clean up a baby?”.  
As the woman trashes the soiled wipes and fishes a clean diaper and bodysuit from a drawer, the red-haired kid abashedly rubs his nape.  
“I was just saying it for your own good, you know…”.  
“Fa-hav?” asks David, who has followed his mother’s gaze to the corner and now is looking at her with his curious, big brown eyes. She smiles at him and bends to kiss one of his little hands.  
“Yes, baby, it’s Fulv. He says hi”.  
“Hello there, little buddy!” the ghost child offers, in a jovial yet slightly cautious tone, eventually resolving to approach the changing table; Marben feels herself a tad overwhelmed by tenderness when Fulv has to stand on his tiptoes to properly see David. “The more I look at you the more it becomes evident, you’re nothing like your Mum, just the spitting image of your fool of a father…”.  
A hand lands onto his nape, unexpectedly but without real malice.  
“Hey!” Fulvius blurts, burrowing his head between his shoulders, hands flying to cover the back of his neck. He looks up at the woman in annoyance, she simply stares back in disapproval.  
“Don’t be an ass. And between you and Lear I’ve already said it twice, since I got up. Don’t make me repeat myself, it’s not even six in the morning”.  
“She deserves it, unlike me. She’s obnoxious”.  
“Be nice to her. You know she's going through an extremely rough patch”.  
“Because Brad died? Please. The only good thing about Brad was the red hair!”.  
Doing a quick work of the bodysuit’s snap fasteners, Marben picks up David and puts him astride her hip, turning her back to the changing table as if to leave behind both the bickering and Fulvius and making for the cot.  
“All right, if you're going to be an a-hole you may as well leave. Go find Ben, you two can play with rulers or whatever it is you penis-provided individuals usually do among yourselves. I’ll have my adult conversation with Turandot”.  
“You seriously think I'd put myself in competition with a grownup?” asks the boy, looking in disdain at the woman. Marben shrugs.  
“You’re the one who asked to stay a child”.  
Shaking his head and letting his pale blue eyes travel through the bedroom, the boy goes back to the original topic.  
“I got killed at six, was alone for forty years and then, when you got old enough to understand me, I chose to ask you not to let my family know where to find my remains, because I didn't want them to be heartbroken about me having died only a few feet away from home. I know love, and I know loss. So, am I really bound to be sympathetic of Lear? I think not”.  
Marben doesn’t rebut with anger or even sarcasm, this time, she just looks sad and resigned.  
“It’s about being human, Fulv. Not about who has the more right to be taken care of” she quietly says, bending down to place David on the cot and brush a hand against his plush cheek.  
She’s already removing the soiled sheets from Grace’s bed, when Fulvius finds the courage to word his thoughts in that regard.  
“Well, I died in 1952. I'm afraid I don't remember much about how to be human”. Just the time needed to shake his head and he’s changing the subject once again, preventing Marben from protesting - as he’s sure she’s about to do. “Anyway, you still afraid the Uruks might come looking for little Davie, here? Because it’s evident the brat couldn’t see me for his life”.  
Indeed, David keeps adoringly staring at his mother as the ghost boy waves a hand in front of his eyes. Marben blows a kiss to her son and retrieves a set of clean sheets from a closet.  
“We can't be sure, he's still too young to know if his eyes are like mine. It took my parents years to figure out what was up with me, yet one of my earliest memories is you looking at me from above, over my crib’s edge”.  
“I’m one of your earliest memories?” goes Fulv, wide eyes, gaping mouth and hand suddenly still in mid-air. “I’m flattered! Ever wonder what a shrink would say about it?”.  
“The hypnologist told me that we must already have loved each other unconditionally, by then, otherwise I wouldn’t have kept such an early memory” Marben turns to let him see the sweet, loving smile gracing her face. He feels his own soften, going from surprised to moved.  
“…I sure did” the ghost admits. Then he turns to the toddler once again. “Maybe it skips a generation…”.  
“Yes, like twins do?”.  
Marben’s good-natured sarcasm doesn’t go unnoticed.  
“Who’s to say, that’s how it went for Esterina and Vanessa…”.  
“Anyway, if it wasn't for Davie, the Uruks would be coming for Gracie. So yeah, I’m still worried”.  
“And then there’s Five”. At Fulvius’ witty remark, Marben stops smoothing the sheet on Grace's bed for a moment. Then she resumes with a sigh.  
“Yes, that too”.  
“Why are you so afraid to meet him? Is this still about finding him different from the kid you remember?” the red-haired boy asks, a tad exasperated, a bit amused, generally miffed, if by the idea of Five or by Marben’s stubbornness it’s not clear.  
“Not as trivial a thing as you’re trying to make it pass, I can assure you…” the woman grumbles, pouting. Fulv chooses to ignore her.  
“Marben, come oooooooon! This is just ludicrous!”.  
“You say it like you're so sure of what would happen if we were to see each other again”.  
“Yes, because it’s bound to happen!”.  
“So you also know the Five I'll see is bound to be everything I despise most in the world” Marben turns to say, and although her voice is even and low as not to disturb little David, who’s quietly slumbering into his cot, it holds a coldness evident enough to silence Fulv. “ **That** ’s what’s wreaking havoc with my emotions, not the unfinished business”.  
The ghost boy lowers his eyes and nods, as if finally understanding what the real matter is made him feel ashamed. His sudden change of demeanor saddens Marben, who tells herself that wherever Grace has ended up she won’t be needing her bed until evening comes; so giving up her Mom persona, she sits down, patting the mattress. Fulvius looks at her hand for a moment and then joins her. As soon as he’s sitting, Marben wraps an arm around him and brings his little body flush against her side, savoring the feeling of him relaxing into the embrace, leaning his dear little head against her chest.  
“Look, I know I'm not exactly acting like an adult at the moment…”.  
“You think? You're even keeping the Girls in the dark about his homecoming!” the boy rebuts, but without snark, just sounding like the kid he looks to be. Marben ignores him.  
“…it's just that I need to warm up to the idea. I’m making sure to be ready for when I’ll have to eventually meet him”.  
“Fine. Fine, you convinced me. Sorry if I was a little shit”. Slipping his tiny arms around the woman’s waist, the red-haired boy squeezes her tight for a moment and then tilts his head upwards, looking for eye-contact. “Just…don’t loose your cool, all right? I’d hate for…something to happen”.  
Marben's face goes pale as she gives him a suddenly terrified glance that seems to grow distant as it prolongs. A few moments later, however, she blinks two, three times, and although the terror is still there, she seems to have regained her composure.  
“He’s not your enemy” Fulv murmurs. Marben nods.  
“…I know. But he can’t know about Grace and David. Nobody from that family can”.

-

When Marben goes looking for Lear, she finds her on her own bed, spooning a peacefully sleeping Grace; the woman’s eyes are closed, but Marben knows she’s awake thanks to her hand, rhythmically stroking the little one’s head.  
“Hey”.  
“Hey” Lear whispers back, cracking an eye open.  
“You want some coffee? I was about to go make it”.  
“Yeah, sure. Thanks”.  
Marben wouldn't want to interfere with such a precious moment, but there is something important that needs to be said.  
“Di should be back anytime, now. She called around two, saying we need to talk. I thought we could do it while the little ones are still sleeping…”.  
“All right. I’ll get ready for work and join you” her friend concedes, but without hinting to stop caressing Grace to get up.  
“Great” Marben nods. Then, placing a hand onto her friend’s shoulder, “Are you okay?”.  
“Define ‘okay’” Lear spits out after a small, bitter laugh. Her eyes are closed once again.  
“Atrocious phrasing, I’ll give you that. But-“.  
“You’re trying to make sure I can get over this without forcing me to open up. I know”.  
“I’m sure you can, but…it’s painful. I know it is. So…will you tell us, were you to find yourself in need of anything? Whomever you feel the closest to, it’s fine, just don’t fight all alone”.  
Lear’s blue eyes just barely peek from under her eyelids.  
“You know you’re the closest”.  
“Don’t wanna point you in any direction” Marben mumbles with a shrug. Lear grants her a small but sincere smile.  
“Thank you. And this goes both ways, however”.  
“I’ll keep that in mind”.  
Marben leans down to press a kiss onto her friend’s hair, and then goes to make coffee.

-

It's not much later that Rum and Sunny jump off the couch and run to whine and scratch at the door: a key turns into the lock, and Diana comes home after a long night at the hospital, tired, hungry, but ready to go back to work. Only, not as a nurse.  
“Good morning” she offers to Myery, Marben and the dogs as well, who are jumping like the mad to lick at her hands and face.  
“Will it be?” Myery readily snarks. Her cousin shots her a dirty look, although she partly shares the trepidation, and goes to meet the newcomer to offer her a steaming cup of coffee, along with a quiet ‘hello’.  
“It depends” Diana replies, without loosing her composure; she discards her bag and jacket, accepts the mug from Marben with a smile, and takes a sip.  
“The kids sleeping?”. Marben nods. “Straight to the point, then: in the mor-where’s Lear?”.  
“Here” says a voice from behind her. Lear crosses the foyer, steals her cup and aims straight for the couch, plopping down on it in the company of Rum and Sunny, unconcerned of the dog hair that will undoubtedly stick to her clean scrubs. “Hi” she offers with a shrug, after a moment of appalled silence that forces her to look back at her friends. Diana blinks, shakes her head and then graciously moves on without commenting.  
“In the morgue’s refrigerator there’s a dead guy bearing evident signs of grim torture” she explains with no preambles as she and Myery take a seat onto the armchairs. Marben joins them carrying two other mugs, one of which goes to Diana, and the other stays between her hands, after Myery gestures for her to keep it.  
“Uruks’ doing?” the red-haired woman asks right away, grimly so.  
“Oh yeah, baby” Diana says with a sardonic smile. “I mean, I don't know if forensics found any fingerprints to confirm it, but...what I saw on the body looks an awful lot like this”.  
Under the Girls’ eyes, she lifts the scrubs and the white T-shirt she’s wearing underneath, showing the right side of her ribcage, strewn with a streak of what appear to be almost completely healed bruises, but are actually scars caused by electrical burns. Marben and Lear stiffen and stare in silent horror, recognizing on their friend and colleague’s body signs similar to the ones they bear; Myery, on the other hand, drastically pales and, suddenly feeling faint, props herself against the armchair’s backrest.  
“So the Uruks we were expecting finally arrived: how could this be bad news?” Lear somehow finds the strength to ask almost right away, and everyone in the room is genuinely grateful for it.  
Diana raises her eyebrows.  
“Well, do you really want Uruks around?”.  
“No, but better the devil we know…”.  
“Who was, the poor fellow?” Myery intervenes in a thin voice, after having inefficiently cleared her throat. Diana looks confused but indulges her.  
“Syd Ishmael, some mecha-“.  
“A tow-truck driver” the red-haired woman brusquely interrupts, on her face an expression that seems one of wonder.  
“You knew him?” Marben queries, looking stunned herself. Myery shakes her head.  
“He was at Griddy’s Doughnuts, the night of the gunplay, left like three minutes before everyone started biting the dust”.  
“How would you know?” Diana frowns.  
“I stumbled upon Diego, that night. Heard some of the things Agnes told him, and then pulled some strings to let a few details from police reports leak…”. A moment of silence, then Myery gives each of the others a brief glance, leaving Diana as last. “What? You said we should investigate, and investigating I went!”.  
“I didn’t expect this from you. Usually you’re not that crazy for fieldwork, you rather stay hidden and maneuver the pawns via telephone…”.  
“Like a Bond movie villain, yes…we even have a cat you can pet while threatening people, now!” Lear snickers, doing a show of lazily stroking Rum's big head, which is now resting on her thigh; the Rottweiler's tail starts thumping onto the sofa, and when he shifts to blissfully look up into the woman's eyes, she blows him a kiss. Myery is not amused, and makes it known.  
“Har har har, veeeery funny. Both of you”. Saying so, however, she leans out of her seat to scoop up Sunny’s blond, smaller frame, and then plops down into the armchair once again, buffeted and sleepy dog scrunched up into her lap in an awkward ensemble of sulks, red hair and long, greyhound-like paws sticking out.  
“I didn't say that to be funny, I really thought you were too busy picking a wedding cake-“.  
“ **So this Syd guy wasn’t the one who killed the snipers at Griddy’s** ” Marben cuts Diana - and everyone else - off before the bickering has the chance to escalate. The Girls have the decency to look sheepish and drop their show to go back to work.  
“Definitely not. And not because he left before the massacre began, more because he looked like the kind of guy who would call someone to take care of a wasp's nest in his place, if he ever found one…” mumbles Diana; at her left, Lear scoffs.  
“By ‘someone’ you mean his wife?”.  
“Eh, probably”.  
“Call me visionary” says Myery then, looking ahead at nothing in particular, marveled expression back onto her face, “But if I had to connect the dots I'd say the corpses at the donut shop used to be on Saruman’s payroll...Dunlendings, we could call them. Whoever killed them is the he or she the Uruks who arrived last are looking for, and that's why they went to the tow-truck driver”.  
“To find out if he knew something about their target” whispers Marben, understanding dawning on her features. “Was there someone else, in the shop? Apart from Agnes and Syd?”.  
“The reports talk about a kid, whom Agnes stated to be Syd’s son…”.  
“And who presumably left with his father, before everything went to hell. Is it known if the Uruks got to the kid?”. Lear’s blue gaze goes from Myery to Diana, as she inquiries. At the mention of Uruks and a kid into the same sentence, Marben stiffens and grits her teeth.  
Diana shakes her head.  
“Let’s hope they didn’t” Marben glumly says.  
“So, summing up, we can be reasonably sure both the Dundlending and the Uruks were not after us in the first place, and even if we got zero intel about who killed the formers we’re pretty sure the seconds will go after him…” recaps Lear, keeping track of her points by counting them on her fingers: when they run out, she brightens up and whisper-shouts her conclusion. “I think we're safe for now!”.  
“Me too, but thanks for not having said it out too loud!” Diana good naturally mocks her, whisper-shouting as well.  
The Girls let out an unexpected, shared bout of laughter, and it's as if Diana's scars, the present threat, Lear's broken heart and what brought them back into town no longer mattered.  
After a bit, Diana notices the iron and board, and gets up to plug in the former.  
“This is truly good news” Myery giggles, as Sunny - general euphoria rubbing off on her sweet, innocent self - enthusiastically licks her face, “But let’s just not claim victory already. We have the chance to repay our debt and perhaps get out of here without arousing suspicion from the Uruks: it would be foolish to let our guard down…”.  
“Relax, at worst we’ll call Jimmy and ask him to make us disappear!” Lear tells her, delivering the little dig with a knowing smirk.  
“No, she’s right. We need to go on keeping a low profile and be ready at any time” says Marben, effectively distracting her cousin from sticking her tongue out at their friend. “In this regard, no one outside us or the schools’ staffs can know about Grace and David. Especially the Hargreeves”.  
“Why this new rule?” Lear queries.  
“Isn’t it obvious?”. Marben cocks an eyebrow at her friend, but eventually gets magnanimous and decides to fully explain herself. “Because I've already come across them several times, since their wretched father kicked the bucket, and apparently I'm not the only one”. Myery blushes under her gaze. “I’ll tell Ben to keep what he knows for himself, too”.  
Standing by the ironing board, Diana frowns.  
“But at the hospital-”.  
“People from the hospital know the woman I posed as two years ago has kids, not me. And those who assisted me during childbirth have been personally instructed by Andrea to never tell anyone about David, or anything concerning him”.  
“Fair enough. The fewer people know about them, the safer the little ones are” declares Myery, raising her hands in surrender at the mention of Andrea, and that’s the end of their serious, collected gathering.

From the other side of the room come a crackle, an unpleasant smell and a loud buzz, closely followed by a loud cry from Diana.  
“AAAAAAAAAAH! A FUCKIN’ STINK BUG!”.  
As if they hadn't just finished discussing corpses, torture and murder, Myery and Lear sprint as far away from her as possible, and Marben fights with all her might against the instinct to do the same (she’s a mother, now, and being a mother means taking care of the insect in the room. Even if it grosses her out more than a public restroom’s floor).  
“Flush it down the toilet before a dog gets to eat it!” Lear panics as Sunny catches a glimpse of the flying bug ad starts following it with her brown gaze.  
A moment later, desperate crying can be heard coming from the bedrooms’ general direction: Marben curses under her breath and starts making for the door.  
“MARBEN! Marben catch it, please!” Diana desperately calls for her, and as she turns to ask if she can’t hear David crying, something on the kitchen counter catches Marben’s eye.  
“No, **you** catch it. Maybe that’ll teach you not to steal from me!” she hisses. Her friend’s face slacks in confusion.  
“What are you talking about?”.  
With a quick hand motion, Marben grabs the newspaper and shows it to her: at the sight of the New York Times from the previous Sunday, opened on a crossword puzzle all messed up in pencil and furious erasures, Diana violently blushes, and falls silent with shame. Even better, she turns around and begins to hunt for the bug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone :) Sorry for the 'delay', this chapter was supposed to come out yesterday, but I eventually decided to edit it after a night of sleep. 
> 
> So, FLUFF and ANGST! After something like a thousand chapters since By your window's beginning we finally get to know a bit more about Fulv...and 'see' Diana's ugly scars. We 'meet' Grace and David for real. We find out Myery's getting married to a Jimmy who has quite a memorable family, and that Lear's deceased paramour – Brad – had red hair. Quite an eventful chapter, indeed. How did you like it? :)
> 
> To all of you go my most sincere wishes for happy holidays, plus a big hug (a safe, digital one, more importantly!) and a big, big 'THANK YOU VERY MUCH', for the precious attention you dedicate to my work.
> 
> Love. 
> 
> PS: No stink bugs were harmed during the making of this chapter.


	6. 3 (II).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: murder, mentions of abuse of a corpse, death, stalking and child mistreatment. Nothing graphic.

  
[Chapter Soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFervpMG_sM)

Klaus is still raiding the dumpster in search of his father’s journal, when a gunshot booms in the alley.  
“CHRIST ON A CRACKER! WE’RE GONNA GET SHOT!”.  
Burying himself deep under the waste, he curses his loud mouth and hopes with all his might he hasn’t revealed his position to the shooter.  
It’s always been like this, for him, speak first and then think. What if for once the bad guy wasn’t looking for him? Maybe now he’ll be killed like a dog anyway, for having been in the wrong place at the wrong time!

“Have you finally found your place in the universe?”. Ben’s voice reaches him from above; peeking between the scrunched cans and the soiled papers he becomes visible, perched onto the dumpster’s rim, staring down at his brother with the disdainful air usually reserved to when Klaus is too much of a misfit for his liking.  
Without uttering a single word, Klaus throws an arm out of the trash and flips off his long lost brother.

A noise like that of cloth getting ripped distracts them from their newborn squabble. It doesn’t sound too close, but is still unequivocal in the sudden silence following the shot’s rumble.  
Exchanging meaningful looks, the two brothers head toward the nearby alley’s entrance, taking care not to make a noise; at the corner, Klaus leans against the wall and beckons Ben to go first.  
“Seriously?” scoffs the ghost.  
“ **You’re already dead**!” his brother mouths back, stomping a foot on the concrete.  
Sighing, Ben goes well into the alley. And just stops after a few stepsOff tune, shoulders going slack, hands slipping out of his pockets.  
Klaus, who’s keeping an eye on him from around the corner, swears and toddles up to there.  
“Hey, Ben? What’s up, Bruder, are you o-HOLY SHIT!”.

There’s a small figure at the end of the alley, clad in a leather jacket and with a black hood on their head; they’re crouched over a corpse, carving something on its bare chest with a pocket knife. When they hear Klaus’ scream, they raise their head and throw the two brothers a chilling look.  
“Oh…oh, no” Klaus whispers, appalled, while long, blond hair slip out from under the hood, and blue-green eyes coldly stare at him.  
“Marben, what did you do?” Ben whispers.

The one they once knew as a smiling and kind girl looks merciless as she stares at the newcomers, her normally gentle features hardened by a serpentine coldness that makes them look like carved into stone. Everything in her is eerily motionless, as if she were preparing to leap and kill them too, in addition to the man lying on the ground. It seems logical, that she would want to, since they’re eye-witnesses. But Ben is already dead, almost nobody can hear him, and Marben shifts her chilling gaze onto Klaus.  
“Watch”, she orders, and only then the two Hargreeves notice the man standing to her right, who’s holding onto the wall and breathing heavily as blood drips from the hole in the middle of his forehead and he stares in horror at the corpse with the ripped shirt and a bloody chest: a quick glance, and Klaus realizes the man and the body, whose face is indistinguishable from a distance, are dressed in the same way. He’s looking at the poor man’s ghost.  
Marben deliberately closes her eyes, takes a deep, audible breath, and a moment later, at her left, a door barred by an old rusty shutter morphs into a dazzling passage of warm light. The dead guy’s ghost looks at it with eyes full of hope, as if inside that light he could to see everything he’s always wished for. He’s not the only one, at the other end of the alley, Ben too is feeling compelled to go toward the light, even though he resists.

Klaus and Ben watch in silence as the man moves unsteady steps toward the breach. As he passes by his mortal remains, he gives them a flabbergasted look, but then goes back to staring intently at the light, and resumes walking. Mere feet away from the luminous door, the guy reaches out a hand. One more wobbly step, another one…and the light goes out. The door suddenly returns being only a barred door, and the raw dismay on the ghost’s face at the sight of it is pitiful.  
“You didn’t seriously think you could get away so easily, after what you did to your sister?!” Marben unexpectedly sizzles at the unknown spirit, sounding terribly dangerous.  
‘ _If barely restrained fury made a noise’_ Klaus thinks, ‘ _it would be the voice she has right now’_. When he turns, however, he finds out something happened to the the woman, and now she looks even more terrifying than how her voice sounds.  
Marben's closed eyelids shine with the same bright light that had been coming from the barred door only a moment prior, looking like naked scleras with small contracted pupils in the middle, very black points in the blinding light reflected by blond eyelashes and eyebrows, which seem to expand even more those already unnaturally big eyes. Klaus is so dazzled by the light that everything else seems to sink into shadow, Marben herself blurs into the darkness in contrast to her glowing eyes.  
The newborn ghost too has turned to look at the blond, seething woman still crouched by his own mortal remains. He shakes his head no, and both Klaus and Ben think he seems to be trembling.  
“P-please…” the man whimpers. A sudden, imperious wave of Marben’s hand, however, and he disappears in a powerful gust of wind that reaches up to the two Hargreeves messing up only Klaus' hair.  
Suddenly, Marben's eyes are back to normal as well, blue-green and open; daylight regains its gray intensity, and compared to the fiery, almost golden glow he saw coming from the woman's eye sockets, Klaus finds himself thinking it almost looks dim and cold.

For a moment, nobody says anything. Then the faint sound of sirens from the approaching police cars starts to make itself be heard, and Klaus predictably freaks out.  
“Fuck, fuck, FUCK! Are you mental? They're gonna lock you up and throw the key away for what you just did to that guy!” he rants, eyes fixed on the corpse laying ahead and hands torturing his hair. Marben just shows him the gun.  
“Stolen from the other night’s crime scene, the shooting at the donut shop. Casing will more likely lead the cops to the four corpses resting into the morgue’s refrigerator, than to me”.  
Klaus seems to be at a loss for words, so Ben speaks on his behalf.  
“Alright. What do we do?”.  
“Follow me” replies Marben, and a moment later they’re fleeing.

-

In the Park, Marben rinses the small knife under a drinking fountain’s spray, then picks a handful of leaves from the pile some sweeper has piled up into a flower bed’s corner. Klaus, whose trembling hand is holding onto the string of a pink balloon, keeps freaking out as Ben silently watches, hands tucked into his pockets, looking aloof.

“I-I think I’d like to know who you are, now”.  
“You know who I am”.  
“No, I don’t!”.  
“Klaus, be reasonable”.  
“How can I be reasonable, I just saw you kill a man?! Is that what they teach in nursing school nowadays?”.  
“Don’t be ridiculous”.  
“Oh, that… **that’s rich**! Every time we meet you have a different name, a different job and a different haircut, but for some reason **I** ’m being the ridiculous one!”.  
“I think you're in shock, you should sit and calm down a bit. And stop saying out loud what I just did, if you get me in trouble I’m coming for you”.  
“And what name should I call you, when I’ll be begging for mercy?”.  
“The one I used to go by when we first met” Marben deadpans, turning to look into Klaus’ eyes. Then, after a brief pause, she relents. “Look, I can't tell you everything. Just know that I really am a nurse and my name is Lola, now”.  
“I did get that, thanks. Is this because you're wanted for murder?”.  
“No. It's because someone wants **me** dead”.  
Klaus seems to loose all animosity and become simply sad, then, and bows his head.

“Whe-where does the light lead?" he stammers; Marben mentally snickers, thinking that for a moment he and Diego are looking at least a little bit alike.   
“Into the afterlife” answers Ben, and Klaus theatrically turns to look first at Marben and then at him.  
“So you’re what, the underworld’s bouncer? And you've already seen her do it, that little show from earlier, haven't you? That's why you don't ask for explanations!”.  
“No”.  
“Yes” the woman and the ghost respectively answer, at the same time. They exchange a fleeting glance, and then a slight smile.

Marben walks toward a rubbish bin and throws the leaves in it; the bloodied pocket knife follows, and then another handful of leaves with which to cover everything and prevent any garbage collector from inadvertently injuring themself while changing the bag. She looks so different from the scary woman in the alley...

“What you two saw me do, earlier, is not routine”.  
“Of course it’s not, you killed a guy!” Ben scolds her, earning himself a dirty look.  
“Shut up and let me talk”. Klaus giggles a bit hysterically; Ben shushes him, flushing. “Klaus, if you don't pay attention I'll burst your balloon” shots Marben, fed up with the brothers’ bickering.  
“You can’t! It’s your alibi!”.  
“You serious? Would being there while you argue with the seller and then steal the last pink balloon from the little girl ahead of you even make a sensible alibi? Since when?”.  
Klaus snorts and rolls his eyes. With one hand he fishes a pack of cigarettes from his whimsical coat’s pocket and gestures for Ben to hold the balloon in question; lost in thought, the ghost makes to grab the string, but a mortified gasp slips out of his mouth as it escapes his incorporeal fingers and starts rising into the air, higher and higher, while he and Klaus look at it in distraught.  
“There. As an atheist, I feel like saying hallelujah!” comments the woman, looking at the pink spot moving away in the sky; Klaus turns toward her looking like someone who just lost a beloved relative.  
“My…my ballo-“.  
“ **As I was trying to say** , what you saw me do earlier isn’t routine” Marben repeats, making herself room for talking. “What I’m supposed to do is let spirits choose if they want to ‘go further’ or stick around…”.  
“It pretty much looked like you and Alley Guy had unfinished business, though, and you wanted to punish him” Ben senses. Marben nods.  
“Correct. And since a very long time, believe me” she says, and with that considers the topic concluded. “I shouldn’t have taken advantage of my ability to torture him even beyond the grave, but…we’re only human beings. Sometimes we feel like justice is needed. And objectively, there are individuals who don't deserve an undisturbed, linear path”.  
“‘We’?” mumbles Klaus.  
“There are other people like me. Not many, but still” Marben says, pulling off her leather gloves and stuffing them into her pocket. “When someone dies and for any reason is not ready to move on, they come looking for us. We can help them accept death and move on, or let them stay and offer some company, soothe their anger, wipe away their tears”.  
“Oh, bummer…my Father knew! He…wanted to enroll you into the Academy!” Klaus suddenly exclaims, looking like someone who’s having an epiphany. “All those times he took me to your School and asked me to observe you, to watch what you were doing, to follow your eyes…he wanted me to figure out if you were like me!”.   
“I did find his projects written down on his journal, that’s wh…” Ben replies, but immediately forces himself to stop, exchanges a fleeting glance with Marben and after a deep breath he carefully chooses his words. “That’s what he was trying to do. Replace you, with her”.  
Klaus is not new at being told that he’s a disappointment, but it’s evident how much the discovery hurts him all the same. Marben wonders if it would be appropriate to cheer him up with words or a hug, but before she can even decide what to do he shrugs the pain off and recovers in his usual fashion.  
“I guess he couldn't bear having a child with a far better sense of style than his” he says, twirling one end of his purple rag-looking scarf.  
The three of them laugh together. Given what happened in the last hour it's obviously liberating, yet they're still amazed to feel lighter once the laughter fades.   
“What about Five? Does he know?”. Marben shakes her head.  
“No, and you can’t tell him. Him or anyone else”.  
Klaus nods and, again, questions.

“How…how did you manage to understand what you can do?”.  
“When I was little...my parents took me to Italy, to visit a Holocaust survivor. She said she hadn't always been like me, but had acquired my same skills after Nazi doctors performed some truly awful experiments on her eyes, during her stay in Birkenau as a child”.  
“Are your eyes like this from birth?” Klaus’ voice asks, suddenly sounding strange, holding a harshness that Marben has never heard in it; she nods, and he looks relieved. “So nobody’s been experimenting on you…because it’s impossible to experiment on fetuses, right?”.  
“You more than many others should believe in the impossible, considering how you came into the world. However, what Esterina - the survivor - told me, is that there are many people who see ghosts, but very few of them do what we do”.  
“You mean creating passages to the afterlife?” queries Ben, stepping in. Again, Marben nods.  
“Among many other things. Like changing spirits’ appearance”.  
Ben smiles and turns to his brother.  
“She’s the reason I look all grown up. And dressed like this, not like a dork as…as I was when I died”. Klaus’ mouth reshapes itself as a very round ‘o’.  
“Oh, that's why…I always wondered!”.  
His state of bewilderment, however, lasts very little, just the time for Marben and Ben to high-five each other.  
“Dad often talked about how I had only scratched the surface of what I’m really able to do, because of my fear of the dead…you think he was alluding to the possibility that I could be like you?”.  
Marben shrugs, taking a prolonged breath.  
“I think not, but I might be wrong. From what I gathered you either are born like this or you become it because at some point someone turns you into a human guinea pig”.  
“Well, he was born with special eyes and dear ol’ Daddy experimented a lot on us…” Ben mumbles, looking pensive.   
“Good point, but as you very well know, I can’t summon the dead , nor subject them to my will. I’m just here to be a comfort for those who wish to stay and therefore look for me”.  
“Or a punisher for the ones who cross you, apparently”.  
Marben doesn’t shun Ben's stern gaze, on the contrary, she returns it with a hint of defiance; she understands her friend's reasons, but is unwilling to be judged for things he cannot fully understand.  
“Wait, did the lady from Auschwitz train you?” Klaus asks Marben, who gives him a reproachful look.  
“Birkenau, you hick, it was Birkenau. And just a little bit, for the most part I had to build my ability from scratch”.  
“So was it her who decided how you…’comforters’ act?”.  
“No, our rules go way back. She in her turn learned from another lady, who before that had a tutor of her own…our conduct it’s a metaphorical baton that gets passed on from a generation to the next. Esterina passed it onto me and her niece Vanessa...we’ll eventually have to find out who will be next, to bequeath the legacy”.  
“Your kind has been around for a long time, then…” Klaus murmurs, looking lost in thought. Marben shrugs a shoulder.  
“I guess so. Anyway, my ability’s only purpose is to prevent the ghosts form losing their humanity and then sending them into the light once they feel ready to go” the woman recaps. “I’m innocuous”.  
Beside her, Ben fidgets. Then, he turns toward his brother.  
“Seems like today, as always, we'll find you a way to be useful tomorrow”.  
“Shouldn’t you be supportive?” Klaus counters, aiming for angry but only managing to sound adorable, even if a bit whiny. “Soy tu hermano, actually the only one de tu familia that still manages to verte y hablarte!”.  
“Marben’s prettier than you, though…” it's all Ben has to say.  
“Just because you like boobs, otherwise you would be dreaming of **me,** at night!”.   
“No, I wouldn’t! You’re my brother!”.  
“Aaaaaww, Klaus! Don't be jealous, honey, you know I love you as if you were my own little sister!” Marben coos, resting her head on Klaus’ shoulder and hugging his arm. Uncharacteristically, he does not move to reciprocate.  
“You mean the favored one, right?”.  
“Now, now, don’t overdo…”.  
“That’s it. I hate you both, get lost!” Klaus says, pulling his arm out of Marben's grasp and making a show of taking his leave, waving his hands to shoo away both the woman and the ghost who just laugh at him. “In fact, I don't even know why the hell I keep associating with you two, damn it!”.  
“Because we’re your guardian angels, man! You’d be lost without us!” Ben shouts after him; his drama queen of a brother spins on his heels and points at Marben.  
“Yes, well, sorry if I say so, but people who love her either die or are already dead, so looks like I should avoid her company!”.

In less than a second the mood changes drastically. Gone are the playfulness, the easy camaraderie, the irony, the good-natured sarcasm. Marben suddenly looks ashen, and both Klaus and Ben perceive each other as terrified.  
‘ _Will she kill me and send Ben to hell, now_?’ Klaus wonders.  
In front of him, however, Marben is not the serpentine, cold-blooded murderer of earlier; she looks small, an ashamed woman on the verge of tears who shuns his gaze.

“ **What in tarnation, Klaus**!” Ben hisses, and his brother doesn’t need to look to know he’s seething; so Klaus just covers his guilty mouth, free hand reaching out for Marben.  
“ **Shit** , I…I didn’t mean to…Marben, I’m sorry…”. She evades his touch and answers with a hoarse whisper.  
“No, you’re…right. Yeah”.  
“Don’t listen to him, you know how he can be!” Ben urges, and Klaus agrees with a shameful nod.  
Marben nods too.  
“But he’s right anyway”.  
“It’s not your fault!”.  
“Of course”.  
Klaus seems to feel so guilty he has eclipsed himself; he dares to look up from the ground one last time, to lay his eyes on Marben - who still does not look at him - and whimpers another apology.  
“I…I **really** am sorry, little Marben”.  
“I know” she says, but she flees anyway, leaving them behind to argue about the unfortunate slip of Klaus’ tongue.

-

On the road that from the Park leads to the flat she shares with the Girls, Marben barely has the time to wipe away the few tears that traitorously managed to escape between her lashes, before running into another very familiar someone.  
It really is ironic that that very day Allison had to dress so similarly to her - studded leather jacket, black jeans, long blond hair left flowing onto her shoulders; it’s like being in one of those silly and trashy TV shows in which two women get dressed in the same way and then compared, to see which of the two really slays the outfit. But above all, it is very ironic how Marben has been in town for just ten days, and despite having done everything to keep away from the Hargreeves, they seem determined not to leave her the hell alone. First the funeral, then the lost son’s return. Now the invasion, and by how numerous they come from everywhere, Marben really struggles not to compare them to the biblical locusts.  
Next to Allison, a petite woman also in black clothes and with clumsily tied up hair waves to a taxi; on her shoulders, she’s carrying a musical instrument’s case. Likely a violin.  
Attracted by who knows what, Allison's gaze suddenly shifts to her, and Marben finds herself looking back hostilely. While one of the most famous women on the planet looks at her as if she were a ghost, for the third time in a row Marben ponders how the whole situation is ironic: for once, she’s playing the part of the ghost, and someone else is staring at her with wide eyes and a gaping mouth.  
Vanya notices her sister's incredulous gaze, but Marben hurries to put on her hood and turn around before her ex-student can see her. She slips along the Park’s railing and walks away, choosing a road that does not lead home, hoping it will make it harder to meet other Hargreeves. After all, there are still three of them left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, many thanks for your attention, my dear ones.   
> I hope you're all well, even though I hear terrible news every time I turn the tv on.   
> I wish you a new year full of happiness, nice surprises, good news and lots and lots of love. Come on, we almost won over this blasted 2020.   
> 'See' you next year! :)
> 
> Love.


	7. 3 (III).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: mentions of murder, detention, non consensual drug use, unhappy childhoods and...corpses, I guess. Yeah, that too.

[Chapter Soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7IOLOk7zaE)

  
  
  
“Hey”.  
Lurking into a van parked in front of MeriTech Prosthetics' facility, a teenage boy opens a duffel bag and fishes out of it the upper half of a mannequin, putting it to sit between himself and the passenger’s seat.  
“Sorry you were in there for so long, Delores” he says caressing her head and not expecting an answer. Except it comes.  
“ _You’ve been drinking again, haven’t you? Any chance you’ve taken a drop too much?_ ”.  
“No, I’m not drunk. ’m working” the boy throws her a distracted glance, and then does a double take. Seated beside him, Delores mysteriously smiles with her purplish lips and evanescent dried-out eyes, irises and pupils devoid of light, purple-streaked skin in stark contrast to the tousled and dusty hair now flowing from her no longer bald head.  
“ _All right, smarty-pants. Are we here to investigate on that fake eye you stole from a corpse?_ ”.  
“Yes, it’s about the eye thing! This is the place it was made…” the teen replies, both piqued and condescending, to then become dubious. “Or… **will** be made. We just have to wait”.  
“ _As you see fit. It's not like I could go take a stroll, anyway_ ”. Delores shrugs and her only hand chases away the flies that insistently keep on landing onto her vitreous eyes, the neat and rosy scar splitting her left, shriveled cheek like a grotesque dimple that makes her smiles too lopsided.

-

The suits can be seen from outside, through the window, even with the two Uruks who wear them showing their backs to the street.  
Diana thinks of turning on her heels and leaving quickly, but then she comes up with an idea - a highly reckless one that could in turn give her and the Girls an amazing advantage. So, looking forward to the satisfaction of calling her boyfriend and tell him she’s a hero, she hurriedly slips on the face mask she just stuffed into her scrubs’ pocket, ties up her hair as messily as she can and goes to get some answers.  
She enters the shop with slumped shoulders, dragging her feet, adopting a gait that doesn't belong to her, and feigning to be in the middle of such a severe coughing fit that barely allows her to wheeze a pitiful ‘good bor’i’g’; then, halfway to the counter, she pretends to stumble on her own feet and turns to throw a quick but attentive glance to the Uruks. The trick works like magic: the bulky guy and the irritated-looking woman with impeccably styled hair - both not being exactly subtle as they probably like to think they are - stare back at her with mild annoyance and even repulsion, the woman waving a hand to let the newcomer know she’s being urged to hurry up and get lost along with all her germs.  
The nurse mentally pats herself on the back and springs ahead.

“Hi Bette…sorry if I tell you, but you don’t look well” Agnes greets her, always invested. Marben says the lady has been a waitress at Griddy’s for more than sixteen years, so it’s a bit difficult to say whether her interest is genuine or only professional habit. Diana likes to think it's the former.  
“I fear my grandma gave me bronchitis” the nurse effortlessly lies, faking a stuffy nose and trying to pass for someone who has roots in the city, in case the Uruks were eavesdropping. “I need to take my medicines on a full stomach, so…can I have a wild berries jelly donut, please?”.  
“Of course, dear, of course! Right away!”.  
“Thanks, Agnes. Seems quiet, today…” Diana offers, trying to sound casual as she eyes the Uruks reflected on a napkin holder on the counter. She needs to get a good look of them, otherwise her rush of recklessness will be meaningless. Agnes, on her part, answers jovially as she skitters back and forth arranging the takeaway order, like she has not a single care in the world and the walls between which she works everyday weren’t riddled with bullet holes.  
“Well, you know, kids aren’t out of school yet. It's late for lunch break, early for an afternoon snack…”.  
“So no queue. Just perfect, I was already afraid of infecting who knows how many people…”.  
Agnes tuts.  
“It’s not your fault, dear, you hospital workers are always so exposed…”. The lady’s gaze lights up with enthusiasm as she deposits the wrapped doughnut onto the counter. “You know what? I’ll give you some extra takeaway coffee, to keep you warm on your way back!”.  
Diana is so dumbfounded she almost forgets to keep up her act when she reaches out to fruitlessly stop the waitress.  
“Oh, Agnes, I can’t-”.  
“On the house!” the lady sing-songs from the other side of the counter, already intent on pouring hot coffee into a Styrofoam cup.

The nurse feels awful as she keeps up faking a few coughs and even goes as far as blowing her nose for good measure: she didn’t mean to trick kind, oblivious Agnes as well as the Uruks. The good news is they obviously didn’t recognize her, or else she would be dead already. Thankfully, they look like they’re even not all that interested in her, just anxious for her to leave so as to take her place in front of the counter.  
Diana can only hope the two shady guys have no intention of hurting the waitress, because - albeit reluctantly - she needs to get out of the shop as fast as possible without looking suspicious. She has already pushed her luck enough.  
So she pays, profusely thanks Agnes when she gives her the promised free coffee (‘Get well soon, Bette dear!’), leaves a generous tip into the jar near the register and walks away, undisturbed.

After informing the Girls about the new intel she gathered, Diana spends the rest of her shift keeping the nurses station’s radio on to check it doesn’t spread the news of a new robbery at the donut shop.

-

“All right, let’s talk” says Myery as she drops the basket full of wet laundry on top of the upright piano. Marben abruptly stops playing and gives her a quick, miffed once-over.  
“About?”.  
“You having been nauseous for two days straight, now. Got something to tell me?”.  
“I’m not pregnant” the blond woman evenly says, immediately guessing what the other is implying but refusing to be triggered into any kind of reaction: she just shrugs a shoulder and starts gathering the music sheets displayed above the keyboard.  
“You sure?”.  
“Don't be silly. Where would I ever find the time to meet anyone?”.  
“As if it had ever been a problem, before! For the last twenty years every time I lost sight of you for a minute you were gone getting yourself a boyfriend”.  
Seated at the dining table, at the other end of the foyer, a brown-haired little head turns to look at them.  
“Have you got a boyfriend, Mommy?” Grace asks in her adorable preschooler’s voice, and detecting a trace of excitement, Marben turns to give her a fond smile.  
“No, angel, I don’t. Remember to mind the lines”.  
The little girl jolts, stares down at her drawings, picks up a yellow marker and resumes coloring.  
“It’s weird, when you call her angel” Myery mumbles, looking unsettled. Marben shakes her head.  
“Only for you. Nobody else feels like that”.  
Myery huffs and pokes her cousin in the ribs.  
“Well? Are you sure or not?”.  
“ **Sure as day** , I’m not pregnant!” the blond woman whisper-shouts, swatting the other’s hand.  
‘ _And you’ll find out soon enough. Just wait until you’ll desperately need a tampon’_.  
Myery keeps looking skeptical as she unceremoniously dumps the dry laundry into her lap and nods to the piano, before turning and resuming her duty at the drying rack.  
“So, what is it? I’m starting to get worried, you’re even playing again”.  
“The brown acid”.  
“Oh yes, yours, Diana’s and Lear’s LSD trip gone wrong” the red-haired woman sighs, suddenly sounding and looking tired as she reaches out for a clothespin, “Though I'm not too sure I understand what you’re hinting at, I didn’t take part in that adventure…”.  
“What I saw that day can’t truly have happened. It doesn’t make sense!” Marben grits out, now visibly distressed as she incessantly runs her hands over her face. She’s pale, and she looks on the verge of a meltdown, so Myery tries to coax her into reasoning with the most reassuring voice she can muster.  
“According to what you told me, hadn’t that nonsense happened you three wouldn’t have managed an escape. Therefore, since you’re all alive and well, we must assume it happened, for real”.  
“But we were drugged, My...so friggin’ much that we survived by miracle…” blows the blond in a thin, scared voice.  
“No, Marben, you Girls were ultimately saved by the Gravedigger. I wouldn't call **his** doing a miracle at all” Myery scoffs, and the blond forgets her anxiety for a moment, in favor of turning a hard stare onto her.  
“Could you please be serious? And stop saying ‘the Gravedigger’, it doesn’t suit him!” she hisses.  
“Too soon?” Myery quips, but there’s something that sounds very much like sorrow in her tone of voice to believe her comment was truly contemptuous. Marben chooses not to bear a grudge over it, but keeps giving the other woman the evil eye even as Myery goes back to the main topic. “Come on, stop wondering if whoever broke you Girls out told the Uruks anything important about us, in the past nine years. Relax!”.  
“Why are you so dismissive of the idea? If that was the case, we would have come here thinking of repaying a debt…to walk right into a trap, instead”.  
As a response, Myery stops fiddling with the laundry once again and turns around with her most rational and unfazed attitude.  
“Had someone close sold us to the enemy, you think we would be here, right now, talking about it?”.  
For a moment, Marben looks flabbergasted, as if she had never really thought of an explanation as simple as that. Her gaze swipes across the foyer, grazing upon David’s small, sleeping shape bundled up onto the sofa along with Diana’s feline foundling, and Grace, still drawing at the table.  
“Yeah…you're right. Sorry, I panicked” she yields. “It’s just that…being back here isn’t exactly helping. You know, with Diego popping out from here, Klaus from there, Ben always in my way, Allison around the corners…after everything that happened, they get on my nerves”.  
“So much for not having the time to see anyone, miss!” the red-haired woman good-naturedly retorts.  
“Myery, I swear, I’m being haunted!” Marben heatedly blurts out, grabbing hold of her cousin’s elbow to give her a tug. Myery wobbles and then yanks herself free, bending to retrieve David's onesie that she intended to hang out but fell from her hand.  
“Said the one who chats with ghosts since the cradle. Seriously, could this conversation ever get any weirder?”.  
“Listen to me! Wherever I go, there’s at least one Hargreeves already waiting for me to show up, they’re driving me crazy!”.  
“Ignore them, then! Pretend you didn’t see anything and keep walking!”.  
“ **I can’t**!”.  
“Oh, right, because your blasted momma brain must be wreaking havoc once again. So what, you’re feeling compelled to adopt those special kids too, like-”.  
As Myery stops and immediately regrets what just blurted out of her mouth, Marben grits her teeth and squares her shoulders, waiting for Grace’s voice to make itself be heard. Surprisingly enough, though, the little girl has nothing to ask, she only wants to clarify one thing.  
“I like it when Mommy wants to adopt. That’s how I got a home and a family”.  
Myery’s face curls up into a guilty mask, then; Marben just mouthes ‘ _I’m so killing you_ ’ before stepping away, to go crouching beside the table, where her daughter hasn’t ceased scribbling with her marker for a single moment.  
“Auntie Myery remembers, lovebird, but she was joking. I’m not adopting anyone” she sweetly says, caressing soothing circles onto the little girl’s back. Grace doesn’t say anything, but her little mouth’s corners turn slightly downwards. “Does this make you sad?”.  
“I…I think all the children in the world should have a Mommy who loves them, and dogs who lick their noses, and a baby brother to kiss, and aunties who help them steal the coo-”.  
“ **Grace** ” Marben admonishes, as the child suddenly lets the marker fall onto the table to cover her mouth with her small, guilty hands. The blond woman figures she now knows what happened to the leftovers Oreo cookies she forbade Lear to give the kids, and thinks she would have liked a whole lot better to remain blissfully ignorant on how Grace eventually got to ate them and Lear to cover her. “It’s very sweet of you to wish something like that for every kid out there, angel, but…Mommy can’t adopt everyone. And after all, the people Auntie Myery was talking about are grown-ups, they can fend for themselves”.  
“Are they going to be all right?” little, sweet Grace who’s always so concerned about others asks, looking at her Mommy with sad brown eyes. The woman gives her what she direly hopes is a reassuring smile.  
“Of course, baby. And the world’s full of Mommies and Daddies, I’m sure they’ll take care of the other kids in need of a home, a family…and dogs with loooooong, pink tongues that can’t wait to lick someone’s little nose!”.  
Saying so, Marben takes on pinching Grace’s nose, cheeks, ears and sides with gentle fingers, and in just the span of a moment the child is squealing in delight, laughing out loud, all traces of her previous melancholy gone. Marben laughs with her, relishing the moment, and when her daughter messily tumbles in her arms, she plunges her nose into Grace’s soft hair, holding her tight. She realizes only in that moment that her children cannot provide her with solution to her problems, but they surely are a formidable antidote for when she feels strength and determination abandon her.  
“I love you, Mommy”.  
“I love you too, ladybird. That’s why I took you with me” Marben softly says, so that her daughter can never think she wanted her for any other reason. “Now, why don’t you show Auntie how good you were at coloring within the lines all by yourself?”.  
Grace enthusiastically nods and climbs back onto the chair, already chit-chatting about how she drew Mommy’s, Auntie Di's and Auntie Lee's hair in yellow, as well as Sunny's fur, because it was the closest thing to blond she could come up with; Myery puts on a smile that still looks contrite, but before she can catch up to the child, Marben grabs her firmly by an arm.  
“You’d better come out to your cousin-niece as the biggest jackass ever, or I’ll have your head pinned above the fireplace! _”_ she hisses at her cousin, before leaving Myery and Grace alone to go take some fresh air.

The view from their rooftop leaves a lot to be desired. Too much smog, too many flats with too many floors each, too much traffic noise coming from the early evening gridlocks in the street. In fact it’s ridiculous that the Girls would refer to going up there with the expression 'get some air', but in the end is as good a name as any other.  
Marben, however, doesn't have much time to think about all that: just a couple of minutes after she sits down on the roof, a slight ringing reverberates into her ears, announcing company.  
The ghost - whoever they may be - seems to hesitate in attempting an approach. Marben is so accustomed to her own nature that she has learned to sense something from shy ghosts’ silences and reticence. And if this time too she’s not mistaken…  
“Hey”.  
“Hello”.  
“Can I sit?”.  
“Of course”.  
A dark silhouette silently crouches onto the ledge beside her and then settles with its legs and feet dangling in the void.  
“So, you still want to have me around, even if you've seen me kill a man for trivial reasons?”.  
“I never doubted you. Just...it pains me to see you kill. I wanted a better life, for you, since you can have it” Ben confesses in an even tone.  
“Well, get in line, you’re not the only one to…” Marben huffs, then abruptly stops, realizing she has just ventured into unsteady water; one sideways glance at Ben, in fact, and it’s obvious that he knows where she was headed. “…to think this about a dear one’s life”.  
“You'll have to see my brother, eventually…”.  
“I know, but when it’ll be inevitable and not a moment sooner” Marben grants, in a conciliatory but assertive tone, and then changes the subject. “Cutting to the chase, wanna let out what you came here for? I promise I won’t break…again”.  
“I’m sorry for what Klaus said-”.  
“I know, and I’m sure he’s sorry as well. There’s no need to repeat all this every time someone from your family screws things up. Thanks for doing this, but save your breath”.  
“It was totally uncalled for”.  
“Yeah, but-“.  
“No ‘but’” Ben cuts her off in a tone that brooks no arguments. Marben finally turns to look at him. “I told you already, stop considering yourself responsible for what happened to everyone you lost. Me above all”.  
“It still hurts to think about what you had to face, though…”.  
“Then don’t add unnecessary blame for things you didn’t have any control over. No more ‘what if I never asked you to help me?’ or ‘why didn’t I get suspicious?’, it was never your job to keep me safe. You asked for my help and I willingly chose to grant it. Everything else is my Father's fault”.  
Dejectedly going back to stare at the skyline, Marben nods.  
“You still sure about wanting to keep the truth from your siblings?”.  
“Yes” he states with no trace of uncertainty; then, he gets fretful and turns to give his friend a worried glance. “You changed your mind?”.  
Marben shrugs and lets out a sigh.  
“There is no way to deal with this and come out of it completely clean. I constantly sway between feeling like owing them the truth and the wish to shield them from it…only then I remember you’re the one to have the final say in it, and you deemed they already grew up traumatized enough, even without knowing your father had you murdered”.  
“It’s for the best” Ben claims, sounding torn as well, but also determined.  
“Yeah, I guess…”.  
“I hate to see you cry, as well”.  
Marben lets out a sad chuckle and gropes for his hand.  
“It has to happen, every now and then” she says when their eyes lock. “It’s good for the kids, you know, to see me vulnerable. Since they’ve got no Dad and I get to do all the work, they need to see adults - **parents** \- being emotional, or they’ll grow up thinking feelings are something to be ashamed of…like you Umbrella Kids used to, back when we met”.  
Something cold and awfully looking like shame crosses Ben's face, who says nothing but stiffens and looks at Marben, bewildered; she sadly smiles at him and reaches out to caress his cheek.  
“Alright, if it’s for the kids’ sake we stan it” the ghost acquiesces then, timidly leaning into the touch. “Just…don’t cry for me anymore, okay? And I’ll make Klaus apologize!”.  
Marben bursts into a heartily laugh, the first real one in days.  
“Oh, leave him alone, he doesn’t own a truly evil bone in his whole body! If I know him even just a little, I’m gonna find him groveling on my doormat in less than twelve hours”.  
“Yeah, well…it’s the least he can do” Ben laughs as well, and then he rests his head on top of Marben's when she puts hers on his shoulder.  
They stay like that for a while, exchanging a few words from time to time as the sunset approaches; then Marben has to excuse herself and go get ready for the night shift.

Downstairs, David has woken up from his unscheduled nap and Grace has joined him on the couch for a short cartoon marathon. Myery’s at the sink, washing and chopping vegetables; one look at the setting of her shoulders, and Marben knows she as well has been on the roof.  
“How long have you been there for?”. Myery stops chopping and sheepishly turns.  
“Almost all of it, I guess. Sorry”. She truly appears to be, so Marben nods and then takes off her T-shirt as she makes for the door which leads to the bedrooms.  
“Looks like you and Ben keep being as thick as thieves…” Myery half-yells at her from a whole hallway of distance.  
“Of course we are, he’s been following his disaster of a brother for the past sixteen and a half years! He needs someone reliable to give him strength, from time to time, he can’t be the sane one forever!”.  
“‘Don’t wanna adopt them’ my ass! Ghost Boy’s basically your firstborn!” it’s what Myery has to say about it, but this time she makes thoroughly sure to mumble it under her breath. A tickling sensation on her calves makes her look down, where Diana’s cat is making little gurgling sounds halfway between meowing and purring, while drawing infinity symbols around her ankles.  
“I don’t know about you” she tells him ”But I have a feeling that our stay here is gonna be a royal pile of shit, Mr Puddles”.  
The cat simply runs after the string bean she’s thrown toward the door.  
A faint, rhythmic sound draws the woman’s attention, making her turn her head to the right: a solitary marker keeps coloring the same point on the sheet since who knows when, without anyone holding it. Myery's dark eyes veer on the two little, oblivious heads in front of the TV.

-

“ _We’re just wasting precious time, smarty-pants_ ”.  
“You know, you don’t have to tell me that. I know there are only six days left” the boy outside MeriTech Prosthetics blurts out at the mannequin. He’s getting impatient.  
“ _This whole fake eye business is a dead end_ ”.  
“Yeah, you got a better idea?”. He gives her a once-over, then does a double take and she’s gone back to being a bald, mute mannequin with plastic skin and a painted smile. The boy irritatedly scoffs, and then looks out of the window again.  
“Okay, then”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the three-days delay, people! I hope you liked the new chapter! :)  
> Thank you so much for your attention! I hope you are all well.
> 
> Love you all.


	8. 3 (IV).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: mentions of shooting, kidnapping, people undergoing surgery and murder. Nothing graphyc.

  
  
“Lola, here. How can I he-”.  
“I was passing by the Umbrella Academy and I heard shots!” a restless Diana tells her, sounding like she’s suddenly developed asthma.  
“Why on earth were you even there?”. It’s Marben's turn, to get worked up. Diana, however, seems to think she’s the only one entitled to be scared, and makes it known by loudly screeching through the phone.  
“I don’t owe you an explanation!”.  
Marben jerks the handset away from her ear and mentally curses, forcing herself to calm down.  
“…yeah, sorry. It’s just that…those idiots bring trouble wherever they go and-”.  
“It’s alright, I know you worry” Diana reassures her, in a suddenly conciliatory tone. “Lately you've been overdoing a bit, though. You sure it's not some sort of delayed maternity blues?”.  
“There’s nothing wrong with my hormones, D- **Bette**. I’m fit as a fiddle”.  
“If it's your very fiddle we're talking about, then your health’s integrity must be more endangered than Greta’s last glimmer of bisexuality. You haven’t played Ramesses II in years”.  
“ **Are you okay**?” Marben hisses through clenched teeth, ignoring the reference to Lear's sexual orientation and her own violin’s nickname alike.  
“Of course I am!” huffs Diana. “I took cover right away, and even managed to see who fired: it was the two Uruks I stumbled upon this very afternoon!”.  
“One hundred percent sure?”.  
“Yes! A huge guy and a lady, both wearing cartoon masks over a suit and a tie…I couldn’t se their faces, but I would have recognized the broad’s bodice and heels among a thousand!”.  
Marben furrows her brow and shifts her weight from a foot to the other.  
“…right. Overlooking the fact that you took a moment to dwell on an enemy’s boobies…”.  
“Come on, who wears a bodice and heels during a home invasion?” Diana points out.  
“That chick, apparently” sighs Marben, tiredly massaging her forehead with her free hand as she feels she's getting a headache. “Anything else?”.  
“Yes. The guy came out first, dragging along something heavy I didn’t see clearly, and left in a blue car. The lady showed up after a bit, looked around, said a lot of bad words and then limped away”.  
“You made sure nobody followed you home, didn’t you?”.  
“I’m not at home yet, I stopped halfway there to call from a random phone booth!” Diana urgently replies, and Marben allows herself a sigh of relief.  
“Bang-up job, then. You know why? Because now we know that My- **Tess** ’ theory was correct, the four Dunlendings in the morgue were indeed working for Isengard, and most importantly, these two nut jobs aren’t here for us! Isn't this a simply wonderful evening?”.  
“It will be, if you deign to come and help me with Mr. Blake, sunshine” grunts a familiar voice as a big, freckled hand lands with a slap onto the telephone’s hook, breaking the line. Marben flinches and makes herself small when her gaze meets the Aspiring Chief of Medicine’s furious one.  
“Sorry boss, it was a matter of life and death”. ‘ _Literally_ ’, she thinks.  
“My apologies, nurse Sexy Mama, but this too is a matter of life or death” he replies, embracing the entire intensive care unit with a wave of the hand he has removed from the phone.  
‘ _The call had nothing to do with my children_ ’, Marben thinks to clarify, but she then realizes it would only make him angrier, and decides it's better not.  
“Yes. Right” she just says, and slamming the phone’s handset in place, she grabs her stethoscope from the counter, rushing out of the nurses’ station. The sound of tired footsteps behind her tells she’s not alone.  
“Don't sulk at me, Lola. You know I come looking for you because you’re the best” the Aspiring Chief of Medicine tells her in a softer voice but without losing his gruff attitude, as he joins her at Mr. Blake’s bedside. Their elderly patient is stable and asleep, almost ready to be sent to surgery, and despite herself, Marben smiles.  
“Relax, boss, there's no need to feel intimidated. It's me, the one you took out for that fiasco of a first date three years ago. I've already seen your worst”.  
He looks at her with wide, outraged eyes, and she laughs.  
“Yeah. Only you had short hair and your name used to be Stephanie, back then”.  
Marben’s laugh instantly dies, and she looks away. Her desire to joke has vanished.

-

As she finds herself on yet another rooftop, later in the night, to spend her brief and very much needed break, Marben thinks about how sometimes what feels right still finds a way to leave a bitter aftertaste behind.  
It’s sodding unfair. Because she deserves a little bit of peace, like everyone else, even though she’s well aware of being as far as she could ever get from classifying as an indisputably nice person. So, as she considers the events of a day that has felt endless but, in fact, it’s already been yesterday for a couple of hours, Marben pulls herself out of the skirmishes between her mind and her heart, sets herself up as mere spectator of their mulish battle and impassively watches them, on a metaphoric plan of existence in which she has renounced conscience and guilt and she’s so unfazed by the show as to even nibble on popcorns.  
The rush of solace that comes with that little peace offering to her own mental health is so strong that her eyes start frantically scouring the roof, in search of the pack of cigarettes she knows that from time to time someone forgets on the ledge…but then Turandot manifests, interrupting her quest and sending the usual thrill to run down her back, while her ears pick up a faint, to anyone else inaudible, sound of little bells. Along with the usual tell-tale signs of a spirit’s presence, Turandot's rage is so overwhelming as to hit Marben with the strength of a billow.  
The blond freezes, trying to remain unperturbed, and with a sigh braces herself for the argument.

“I’ll apologize, if you want” it’s all she offers as a greeting, “But you know where I stand. He earned himself a death sentence the day he killed you, over thirty five years ago”.  
The ghost woman says nothing for a while, and Marben perceives her change of mood as if it was her own: the bond connecting them keeps feeling scorchingly furious, but at the same time she can detect something akin to understanding dawning underneath it all.  
“He still was my brother” Turandot eventually hisses, sounding betrayed and heartbroken.  
For the first time since very long, Marben refuses to question herself, as well as to turn to look at the other woman. She’s worked hard to accept her own guilt as well as to avoid being smothered by it, locking eyes with her lifelong friend would just make all her newborn certainties waver and throw her into despair.  
When she replies, she uses her own anger to legitimize what she did and shield herself from the ghost’s grudge.  
“Yes, and he put a bullet into your head to work his way up, even though you sacrificed everything to raise him the best you could despite being a child yourself, when your parents died” she spits out with such a venomous voice that Turandot recoils. A moment later, however, the spirit’s determination and anger are back and she retorts, even if from a safe distance. She’s scared of being banned like her brother.  
“The world is full of ungrateful brothers who trample their sisters’ sacrifices! Would you want somebody to kill Oliver or Daniel, were they to turn their backs on you?”.  
“I can handle mistreatment toward myself. That done to those I love, I do not tolerate” Marben simply says, as if it could be such a valid reason as to justify any end and any mean.

Turandot knows how fiercely protective the blond child can be, there was a time when she too would have done anything to keep her brother safe and avenge their parents. Now, however, she’s unable to empathize with Marben, despite - like Turandot herself - her being a daughter, a sister, a mother. It’s as if they knew each other and at the same time they didn’t. So, since Marben seems to be insusceptible to see her point, she tries to appeal to the other’s biggest weakness: her loving nature.

“I didn't want his life to end like this”.  
“Well, as things go in his working field, I even granted him the favor of a clean and fast death”.  
Turandot enjoins Marben to shut up, in Chinese.  
“What you did is still horrible! And now that he’s dead you’re even trapping him here for no reason! This is torture!”.  
“What's the matter, darling? Are you afraid I might develop a taste for inflicting pain on others?” Marben asks in a soft but deceptive voice, which sounds sweet while offering a glimpse into a part of her own being that the blond woman knows perfectly well to be terrifying to the ghost’s eyes. As she delivers that verbal stab, Marben finally gives up and looks at the spirit, in a movement that engages only her eyes and leaves her face stubbornly in profile; she’s aware to appear creepy when her pale irises rotate so much that it looks painful to force them in that position, a long stretch of white cornea taking up most of the gape between the eyelids. Her British accent is deliberately back, full-on, and Turandot’s raw fear unconditionally surges through the link connecting them like a gush of blood.  
As a rule, Marben is not susceptible to the charm of inflicting fear, even if she has occasionally taken a subtle pleasure from catching terror in the gaze of a dying enemy; it’s totally unexpected, therefore, that Turandot's - not an enemy, indeed, someone she considers _family_ \- fear should make her gloat.  
Unexpected, but not unwelcome. She _wanted_ to be scary.  
“Your duty is to assuage the pains of the dead, not to judge and punish. You’re no god” the ghost woman, whispers.  
“Of course I'm not. I do exist”.  
Turandot’s voice gets back in full force, then, but with a strong panicked undertone.  
“You’re out of control! Are you gonna go after the woman who killed Fulv as well? Because as far as I know you might even go as far as to ask Myery's boyfriend to bring you back in time and help you make sure that Fulv never met his killer! By then you won't be too different from Sarum-”.

Marben barks in a dry and hard voice something that both of them have not heard or spoken for a very long time, a Chinese word sounding poetic even from the mouth of someone whose native language is not Chinese. It has the desired effect, Turandot jolts and looks at her, flabbergasted, like a little girl who has just unexpectedly been scolded by her mother. What Marben hadn't foreseen, is that she winces too, hearing herself pronounce what is her middle name out loud. Somehow, it has the power to snap her out of the sudden need to be scathing, mean and dangerous, so out of character of her.   
“No-no one has called me that in…more than thirty five years, like you said” the ghost utters in a thin voice. Marben, who’s finally found the guts to fully turn toward her, suddenly looks like a trapped animal.  
“I know. You were the one to ask for a new name, to…to make this one exclusively mine”.  
“Yeah…it seemed like the right thing to do, give my name to you in exchange for one chosen by you”.  
The blond woman forces herself to soften her stance, her gaze and the emotions running through the connection that binds her to the ghost as well, then, sighing to muster all the calm she’s able to.  
“Look, I didn't necessarily want to kill your brother, I just took advantage of having to defend myself. He’s the one who came looking for me” she ends up confessing in a much quieter voice than the one she has kept using until then. The bond tugs at something within her, vibrating in pain, shame, shock and guilt all at once.  
“Can you at least promise me you won't let him wander this world without a friendly contact for too long?” Turandot asks after a moment, sounding impossibly frail.  
“Of course. I’ll ask Vanessa - Esterina's granddaughter - to take care of him for a while, then she’ll be the one to send him to the other side”.  
When she sees how much Turandot is looking dejected, small and vulnerable, Marben feels herself beginning to break. She abruptly refrains from it, allowing only one of her thick walls to crumble and let compassion surge out like medication for both their hearts, and reaching out, she pulls Turandot into a tight hug. The spirit openly sobs onto Marben’s shoulder, and returns the hug.  
“I didn’t…stay out of desire for ve-vengeance” Turandot stutters and sniffs.  
“What is holding you, then?”.  
“Fear, at first. Then love”. Turandot holds tighter, buring her wet face into the crook of her live friend’s neck. “I’ll never leave you, baby mine”.  
“Love you too” Marben whispers, caressing Turandot’s dear nape.  
“Promise me you'll never let yourself be tempted by revenge again”.  
“I…huh…”.  
“ **Please.** Two wrongs don’t make a right, and I don’t wish for you to lower yourself to such a level, or that one day you may feel regret for what you’ve done”.  
Marben barely refrains form remarking how she’s sure that she’ll never regret killing Turandot’s brother, because there’s something monstrous stirring inside her chest, that behind her appearance of a petite, gruff but kind woman, roars triumphantly making her feel at peace for wiping a horrible man off the planet. She’s sure Turandot wouldn’t want to know about the existence of this awful part of her, even if it’s not the first time it has asked for a blood tribute. So she’s grateful that her inner turmoil doesn't seem to be passing through the bond.  
And promises.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	9. 4 (I).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: mentions of death, kidnapping, addiction, torture...and petty theft, I guess.

  
  
  


After a night shift at the hospital, Marben is understandably exhausted. Still, she walks to her favorite cafe and gets herself breakfast.  
To go home, she chooses small, uncrowded streets that make her feel more optimistic about making bad encounters, but that makes her run into an old acquaintance for the second time in a matter of only a few hours: next to the Icarus Theater’s stage door, Vanya stops chatting with a guy as soon as their eyes meet.  
For a small eternity Marben holds her breath, stuck into a fight or flight kind of instinct. Then she decides not to shy away, and forcefully exhaling she walks up to the woman her once young student has grown into.

“Hi”.  
“Hey…it’s nice to see you again! I didn’t know you were in town!” Vanya immediately returns her smile, even if timidly.  
Marben feels her smile grow more sincere and warm. A quick glance tells her that her ex student has become an extremely insecure woman, who stubbornly tries to assert her personality even if she feels weighed down by what she has been taught to think about herself, and that she’s afraid to see reflected in other people’s eyes. Marben feels like hugging her, but she fears it would make Vanya uncomfortable. Therefore she stays where she is, close but not too much, with her hands clinging to her bag’s strap and the warm paper cup.  
“Yeah...it's been a long time”.  
Vanya's smile changes too, but becoming less amazed and more nostalgic; only then she seems to remember they’re not alone.  
“Oh! Leonard, this is M-”.  
“ **Lola**! I’m Lola. Hi, nice to meet you” the blond steps in, offering an outstretched hand that Leonard shakes right away. Vanya sends Marben a curious glance, but graciously says nothing about the new name.  
“Hello! Are you a fan of Vanya, too? She's the most talented violinist in town, you know…” he says in a playful, conspiratorial tone. Vanya demurely chuckles, and her reply comes out ironical.  
“Actually **Lola** is much more talented than me, she was my teacher…a long time ago. My dazzling success? I owe it to her”.  
“At least **you** kept playing” Marben counters, slightly bitterly. She’s referring to the break she took from the violin, dating back to when she was fifteen, and Vanya readily catches the indirect mention of Five’s disappearance: she recalls all too well how hard a time it was for Marben, and both of them suddenly wish they never fell into the trap, leading the conversation to run aground on the dramatic story that caused the end of their friendship.  
Luckily Leonard is still there, and willing to distract them with his curiosity.  
“So, how did you two meet?”.  
Back to square one.  
“I saw her play, once, when we were kids. My brother knew her, so he put us in touch….wait, do you know about Five?” Vanya suddenly turns to the other woman, hand reaching out to grab her shoulder.  
“Yeah” Marben simply says, hoping that with a little coldness on her part the topic will be dropped.  
She’s not sure she has managed to hijack the conversation on the desired path only because she lacks the time to do so: while Vanya stares at her in confusion, narrowing her eyes, trying to understand if behind Marben’s curt reply there’s something she cannot quite grasp, a joyous voice distracts all of them.

“Oh my God, **hi**!”.  
Seemingly coming out of nowhere, First Chair Helen Cho gets past Vanya and Leonard and runs to enthusiastically hug Marben.  
“Oh! Hi Helen…” Vanya greets, with the tone of someone who desperately tries not to go unnoticed, and Leonard gives her a strange glance. Unfortunately, all of Helen's attention is focused on Marben, who awkwardly pats the musician’s shoulder and curses herself for having gotten into trouble when she could have just played dumb and kept walking, as Myery advised her to do.  
“Hey…”.  
“I can’t believe it, we keep bumping into each other!” Helen chirps, finally breaking the hug but not relinquishing the grasp on Marben's hands. The blond shrugs and offers a tired smile, hoping the social stalemate in which she got stuck will be over soon.  
“Yes, I suppose this city is not so big after all”.  
“Wait a minute, you know Lola as well?” Leonard, that has been staying on the sidelines, asks Helen. She looks at him as if she hadn’t noticed his existence until then.  
“I’m sorry?”.  
Vanya gets visibly nervous. Leonard, instead, keeps smiling and doesn’t give up.  
“Did you meet Lola through Vanya?”.  
“Lo…? Oh, yes, **Lola**! Sorry” Helen giggles, winking at Marben as she stresses the fake name. “No, we went to school together…unfortunately we weren't in the same class, I would have given an arm for that to happen!”.  
“Vanya used to be her student” Leonard counters, looking somewhat smug. Helen boggles and turns to look at Marben.  
“ **You used to teach**?”.  
“Huh…not officially. Vanya's been my…only student” the nurse replies with an uncomfortable smile.  
“Oh...well, I couldn't have said!”.  
“What do you mean?” Vanya shots, turning on her colleague a gaze that is surprised, hurt and outraged all at once. Marben feels outraged too. So she sends to hell all her qualms about being appropriate and reserved, steps ahead and smiles as she links arms with her ex student.  
“Sorry, but I’m gonna need to keep Vanya all for myself for a moment. Have a nice day!” she says, ignoring Helen’s and Leonard’s confusion, leading the Hargreeves’ outcast toward the stage door. “So, tell me about that proposal CSO’s director made you…”.  
Behind them, Helen’s incredulous whisper of ' _Chicago Symphony Orchestra_?' is almost too good to hear.

Vanya doesn’t take her eyes off the blond woman for a single moment as she lets herself be gently dragged into the theater: what she sees differs a lot from what is offered by television and magazines, but Marben still manages to appear beautiful even wearing scrubs, sporting the tired look of someone who hasn’t slept and rebellious locks slipping out of her simple updo.  
Vanya doesn’t feel up to her. She’s sure that if Marben were to pick up the violin again that very same day, she would be back to being a prodigy in no time. Not just Saint Pluvium Chamber Orchestra’s lousy Third Chair.  
“It’s too prestigious an achievement, she’ll never believe I landed it!” she finds herself whining, slightly panicking at the idea of being approached by Helen - _First Chair_ Helen! - about Marben’s lie. The blond just shrugs and smirks.  
“Don't sweat on it! And maybe get a little cocky, when she's around, she has no right to be that bitchy”.  
“She’s First Chair…” Vanya whispers looking at the floor, as they stop just inside the theater for a moment.  
“So what? Makes her the only one who can play?”.  
When her ex student throws her a fleeting glance and refuses to say anything, Marben gets worried.  
“Are you okay?”.  
“You ask this because I’m dating a man and as far as you know I like women?” Vanya asks then, all of a sudden sounding piqued. Marben is taken aback, and not feeling like being indulgent at all.  
“No, you’re in control of yourself and free to date whoever you want. I wish for you to be happy, whether it be with a man, a woman or even by yourself”.  
“Yes, I’m okay” briskly goes Vanya, “For the first time in a long time, if you really want to know. Even if it's none of your business”.  
Marben just blankly stares at her for a moment, then nods.  
“Excellent. Thanks for rehabilitating my and the Girls’ reputation with your book” she leans forward to say into the other woman’s face; then she turns and makes for the door, leaving a trail of words behind herself. “Condolences on your father's death, anyway. And on Ben’s too, since you all never allowed me to offer them. It’s been a pleasure”.

-

“Marben” Ben calls later, and she startles, almost dropping the stack of medical records she’s carrying.  
“It’s **Lola**!”.  
“You’re the only one who can hear me, I’ll call you however I want!”.  
She pinches the bridge of her nose between two fingers, taking a deep breath.  
“What is it, Ben?”.  
“Klaus”. The nurse turns an exasperated look on her invisible friend.  
“What has he done, now? Overdose? Burglary? Obscene behavior?”.  
“No, this time he’s in serious trouble for real: he got kidnapped by two hoodlums who attacked the Academy last night”.  
“Shit! The heavy lump Diana couldn’t see…” the woman mumbles, looking away.  
“What?” asks Ben, but she hurries to brush him off.  
“It’s nothing...so what do you want me to do? Tell the others?”.  
“No! Go help him, please, the others haven’t even noticed he’s gone!”.  
“How the heck is that possible?” Marben blurts out, outraged; Ben’s urgency slips away like water going down a drain, transfiguring his dear face into a sad mask of impotence and resigned disappointment.  
“It's Klaus. You know nobody takes him seriously” he whispers, and Marben truly feels bad.  
“Ben...I can’t” she sweetly and sorrowfully says, reaching out to caress his cheek. “We just got a call about a huge fire, we’re needed on the scene to assist the evacuated sta-”.  
For the first time since they met, Ben dares to swat her hand away. Marben feels like he slapped her in the face.  
“They’ve been torturing him for more than twelve hours straight! Withdrawal’s driving him up the walls and you know which of the two is the worrying bit, for him!”.  
“Yeah, since he’s always been one for breath play…” she blows back, without truly intending to make a joke out of it. Ben grits his teeth and speaks with sheer urgency.  
“Please, Marben!”.  
“I…I can’t. I’m sorry, sweetheart, it’s not-“. Ben gives her his back and walks away, disappearing as he goes. Left behind to look at his retreat with eyes full of remorse, Marben finishes the sentence mumbling to herself. “…my job, to watch over your siblings. I already have too many responsibilities”.

She sighs and feels terribly guilty. It's not a good day, whatever she says or does the Hargreeves just get pissed off.  
Since she hasn’t been called through the loudspeakers yet, Marben grabs a phonebook, the nearest phone’s handset and dials the Umbrella Academy’s number as fast as she can. Nobody picks up.  
She tries again dialing by heart the number of the gym where Diego works and lives. Again, nobody picks up.

-

MeriTech Prosthetics’ ruins are still smoking when the ambulance arrives. Marben looks at them, sincerely hoping they’re not hiding any charred bodies within, then remembers that had there been any victims their ghosts would have come looking for her, and since the ambulance ride has been uneventful she breathes a sigh of relief.

“Hi, Lola” a voice greets her as she dismounts from the ambulance; slowly whirling on the newcomer, the nurse prepares to get annoyed.  
“Detective Patch” she wearily acknowledges, indeed.  
“That’s my name, yeah!” the Detective giggles, aiming for easy-going but only managing awkward. When Marben - or Lola - gives her a deadpan stare, however, Patch clears her throat and tries again with a confidential attitude. “Are you okay?”.  
“Aaaaaaall right, let’s get to work” the blond pointedly announces, heading toward a little crowd of civilians and policemen, some wrapped in orange blankets and others collecting statements. “What do we have, besides an incinerated building?”.  
Detective Patch toddles after her.  
“Luckily no victims, just a bunch of contusions, scratches and sho-”.  
“Was it a doctor, who told you so?” Marben abruptly stops to asks, and Patch stumbles onto her own feet not to end up crashing into her.  
“No, I-“.  
“Then let the medical staff do their job, Detective. Who’s the one you need me to treat first?”.  
“Uh…that one”. Looking peeved, Patch points to a man sitting on a low wall, rocking back and forth as he shakes and furtively looks around; his nervous, fidgety fingers are toying with something crumpled. “Mister-”.  
“Whatever. Why are you looking at him like that?”.  
“He won’t answer any of the question I pose to him, and not content with that he even talks nonsense” the officer admits. “He says he’s been held hostage by some kid who wanted a glass eye and…wait!”.

Marben doesn’t wait, she picks a shock blanket from the ambulance and goes straight to the man.  
“Miss! You have to help me!” he calls out as he sees her approaching, going as far as to try and throw himself forward to latch onto Marben’s arm, but ending up piteously wobbling on unsteady legs, hands outstretched and hallucinated stare. The nurse readily catches him and - with notable effort - pushes him toward the low wall again, donning the best reassuring smile she’s able to under strain.  
“Sure, it’s my specialty! But it’s better if you sit down, sir”.  
The stranger mechanically nods and lets himself be guided, without actually being of any help; once he’s finally seated again, Marben wipes her forehead, gives him a quick once-over that gives her most of the medical informations she needs to know, and trying to keep her heavy breathing at bay she readies herself for a match of ‘who’s the biggest idiot’.  
“There. How are you feeling?”.  
“I’m in shock, can’t you see?” the man testily blurts out even though he’s back to shaking like a leaf. The nurse resists the urge to cock an eyebrow at him and keeps on innocently smiling as she watches her patient fish something from his hoodie’s pocket and resume fiddling with it: it’s a scorched old photo, a close-up of a man with a hat.  
“Very clearly, sir. That’s why I got you a blanket”.  
Marben makes a show of unfolding the bright orange cloth and placing it onto the guy’s shoulders, then, letting him whimper in relief and bundle himself up to his own liking before he resumes to rock back and forth right away. The photo falls to the ground, and crouching in front of the man, Marben discreetly sneaks it into her pocket.  
She then proceeds to tuck two fingers under his wrist, her blue-green eyes fixed on her watch as if to keep track of the guy’s breathing pattern when as a matter of fact she’s paying it little to no heed.  
“I gathered that you weren’t in the building when the fire broke…” the nurse tentatively offers after a bit. The stranger seems to mentally tear himself out from his apathetic state.  
“No, I wasn’t! I was being held hostage!”.  
“…I’m sorry, the police said you-” Marben feigns confusion and turns to look toward Detective Patch and her colleague Beaman, but the man seizes her shoulders and tries to shake her. _Tries_ , because she’s almost instantly prying his hands off of herself.  
“ **The police think I’m crazy**!” he whisper-shouts in Marben’s face, and she finds herself wondering ‘ _How could you blame them_?’. A moment later, however, she reassures him.  
“…well, I think there might have been some kind of misunderstanding, here. You know, treating patients is delicate stuff, and…Detectives simply aren’t trained to do it properly” the nurse illustrates through a sardonic grimace.  
“Oh…a-and you are?”.  
“Of course, I’m a nurse! And I promise I’m going to take you seriously”. Marben offers a hand to the stranger. “My name is Lola”.  
“L-Lance Biggs” he stutters, then cautiously shakes her hand.  
“Nice to meet you, Lance. Now, wanna tell me about your stay with the kidnappers?”.  
“It was only one!” Lance hisses, leaning close as if he didn't want to be heard by anyone else.  
“Oh?”.  
“A kid!” he agitatedly says. “Foul-mouthed and with crazy eyes, he held a knife to my throat demanding to know...how to trace down the owner of a glass eye he found at some playground...but I didn't tell him! Because I know it's illegal!”.  
“Great job, Lance! You have some stones!”.  
“Thanks, I...I pride myself of being an honest citizen, you know” Lance says with a slight half smile, looking timidly flattered. Or is he nervous?  
“And it does you honor” the woman smiles at him, patting his arm. “So is there an armed kid running around town?”.  
“Yes! And his father encourages him! They’re two raving lunatics!”.  
“You…met your kidnapper’s father, too?”.  
“Yesterday he came to my office, slapped his son and accused me of doing it! He told me I would go to jail and that people like me get passed aro-”.  
“All right, Lance, that’ll do. Thank you” Marben hurriedly cuts him off as she jumps to her feet like a jack-in-the-box, partly to avoid having to hear grotesque stories about life in prison and partly because she’s had enough with the theatrics. From his seat on the low wall, Lance looks at her in disbelief and confusion.  
“Enough? For what? You too think I'm crazy?”.  
“No, no. No. Really. No”. Marben cringes at the impressive amount of ‘nos' she’s blabbering, but for goodness’ sake, even with a gun to her head she wouldn’t be able to come up with anything better to say!  
“It's just that...your shock is too severe, you need to rest” it’s what she manages to blurt out, in the end. “I think what you told me is enough to provide some relevant information to the police, so that they can investigate…and make sure those two nut jobs don't come looking for you anymore”.  
“Are they going to believe it, if you’re the one to say it?” Lance queries, owlishly blinking up at her.  
“Of course! I’m the one trained to deal with people in shock, they purposely called me to translate your statement into something they could work on! You gotta be patient, they need to be helped a bit”. Marben smiles for the thousandth time and pats him on the shoulder. “I’m getting you released right away. Wait here, I’ll just go tell Detective Patch you can go…”.  
“ **Thank you**!”.  
Looking way too much relieved, Lance jumps to his feet and reaches out to shake hands with her once again; Marben looks at him, mystified, and misreading her attitude he turns to embarrassedly look at the blanket piled on the low wall. “Oh, sorry…you want that back?”.  
“No, no…keep it, shock makes you feel cold”.  
“Right! God bless you, Lola!” Lance says awkwardly, sounding moved as he picks up the blanket and puts it on his shoulders again.  
“Yes, yes…let’s not bother him for so little…” Marben mumbles with a forced smile, finally managing to take her leave.

“No signs of real shock, he’s just scared shitless” she hisses into Patch’s ear when she approaches the folding tables next to the fire truck, on which the Detective and Beaman are inspecting items recovered on the crime scene, including what appears to be a strip of limp black material, scorched at one end. Hearing her words, they both stop to send alarmed glances toward an oblivious Lance, who’s distractedly looking around, back to sitting on the low wall and clenching his shock blanket like an overgrown Linus.  
“Of what?” asks Patch, at a loss. Marben shrugs.  
“Check his financial records, his funds, properties, _everything_. He’s too scared of going to jail to truly be clean”.  
“Get that over to the lab, immediately. I’ll be right back” Patch tells Beaman, before storming off.The blond watches for a moment the Detective’s retreating back, then makes to say her goodbyes and leave herself, but when she turns, Beaman’s eyes are still glued on Patch as he keeps his gloved hand up, holding the burned material with tweezers. She smirks, deciding she’d like to play a little bit with him.  
“Why is she so eager to please everyone?”.  
“Everyone?” Beaman snorts. “She acts like that only when you’re around!”.  
“Aw. It sucks, when you wanna be tough but someone tougher shows up and castrates you, huh?”.  
Finally realizing he’s being observed the officer turns his eyes on Marben, and surprisingly blushes.  
“I wonder if you’ll ever find the courage to ask her out” she muses out loud, staring at him with an absorbed expression. He looks away and plays dumb.  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about”.  
“I’ll take my chance, then”.  
The tweezers fall onto the metal tray with a hell of a clang that stops Marben mid-shrug. Smirking at the sight of a flustered Beaman who’s busying himself puttering about the evidence and stubbornly refusing to meet her gaze, Marben turns on her heels. A couple of steps away from the tables, however, a few words reach her eardrums.  
“…may I join in?”.  
The nurse spins around so quickly she almost gives herself whiplash.  
“What?” she breathes. Beaman starts again, looks up with wide, horrified eyes and squawks.  
“ **WHAT**?”.

Taking pity on him, Marben just walks away, humming audibly this time, to prevent whatever other comment might come from Beaman to reach her ears, and crossing her hands over her tush, as to not offer a view to a man who just overtly declared to be interested in a hypothetical threesome involving her and his own boss.  
As she passes by a police car, something yellow abandoned on the passenger’s seat catches her eye. To manifest all the discomfort that dealing with the city police causes her every single time, Marben reaches out through the lowered window to pick up the roll of tape, and stuffing it into her pocket next to the photo she stole from Lance, she retreats in the ambulance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE! Double update, this week :) Let's see if I can keep up this pace from now on.
> 
> Finally, another reunion, even though it didn't go all too well...and, above all, I think it wasn't the one you were waiting for! Be patient for a little longer, my dears, it's not time yet for Five and Marben to see each other again. Soon. 
> 
> Are you washing your hands? Do you still wear masks? Please vaccinate, if you can. Too many bad things already happen every day: if we can avoid having to deal with covid too, let's do everything possible! 
> 
> Love.


	10. 4 (II).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: underage drinking, drunk characters, mentions of unhappy childhoods.

  
  
  
  


“ _In need of some liquid courage?_ ”.  
“Nothing gets past you, huh?” the boy grits out, words sounding muffled by the jacket sleeve he’s improperly using to wipe his mouth.  
“ _You wanna ruin your liver all over again? It's back to being as good as new, smarty-pants, you should take great care of it…meaning, not be drinking in the middle of the afternoon!_ ”.  
“You know, conversations like this one cause more harm than alcohol itself!”.  
He makes a show of slamming the red notebook closed, hoping she’ll get the hint and stop nagging at him. But no, Delores has always made a point of distancing herself from his childish upsurges, and this time is no different: she curls her purplish lips, cocks an eyebrow and narrows her misty eyes until they’re reduced to two thin slits.  
“ _Sure. So, are you already drunk or just pissed off because the glass eye trail has literally gone up in smoke?”._ Five ignores her, with a hand he brings the bottle to his lips to take another long swig and with the other he keeps furiously scribbling on the fresh notebook. _“All right. I’m off to sleep. You’re gonna be hateful anyway, in a while, so-_ ”.  
“Not this fast, I chugged enough to actually bring myself to open up!” the boy unexpectedly blurts out, then, slamming the pen down and turning to look at her. Delores stares back, looking as if she’s baffled from what she’s seeing. She should be practically blind, with those cloudy eyes, and yet...  
“ _Oh my…it’s gonna be one of those moments, then_ ” she sighs, making abundantly clear through her tone of voice how she’s resigned to suffer, since she can't do otherwise.  
Again, Five ignores her.  
“Listen, I know you’re angry…and you have every right to be. But I still hope you know it wasn't about Handler. I had to get out of there in any possible way, if I wanted to give us a chance…”. A pause, a belch, an indignant scoff on Delores’ part. “Believe it or not, I did it all for you, too”.  
“ _Didn’t seem like it at all_ ” she says without mincing words, as her usual. But for some reason, that night Five is in dire need to make himself clear, and even starts gesticulating - uncoordinatedly so, since he’s sloshed - to show how much he cares about what he’s saying.  
“I know, but…I had to work with what I had”.  
Delores manages to look haughty even in her miserable, mutilated state, as she gives him a moment to recover his dignity after such an outpouring. Five can tell he’s not forgiven, even if she believes him.  
“ _Life really sucks, sometimes_ ” it’s all she has to say, in the end.  
“Yeah”.  
“ _I suppose I have to thank you, after all_ ”.  
“Don’t. You know you mean everyth-“.  
“ _I was talking about my hair_. _That blasted wig was killing me! Brown hair really don’t suit me…and the hat! Good Heavens, did you see_ _ **the hat**_ _?_ ”.

-

In another part of town, other people order other drinks, but the outcome doesn't change.

“Hi. Can I have a Martini and an Old Fashioned, please?” Myery calls out to the barman, as she tiredly leans against the counter; he smiles at her.  
“Wow, someone’s had a rough day…”.  
“What? No, one is for me and the other for…that bitch of a friend that just disappeared” the red-haired woman grumbles, getting annoyed when she turns to look for the friend in question and doesn’t find her in the vicinities. “Where did she go, to chat up someone already?”.  
A quick look at the bar’s lounge and she finds her answers.  
“Right, to chat up her ex…or her ex’ famous sister. Sorry, gotta go prevent a catastrophe”.  
The barman laughs as she marches off, aiming toward the table at which nothing less than Allison and Vanya Hargreeves sit, amiably chatting with Lear.

“Hey, My-” Vanya greets with a kind smile, and for a moment Myery is almost sorry to have to interrupt her.  
“It’s Tess, now” she says anyway, and the two sisters look dumbfounded by her brusque tone. “Hi Vanya, hi Allison. How’s it going?”.  
“Fine, thanks”.  
“Yeah!”.  
Both Allison and Vanya are sporting unexpectedly relaxed smiles and clutching onto tumblers; Myery assumes they’re toasting to the few pleasant memories they might have made during their dysfunctional upbringing and serenely making peace with the fact that it has finally come to an end along with their blasted father. Suddenly, she remembers good manners.  
“Oh, right, we should offer you our most sincere condo-“.  
“Sweet Jesus, if I hear yet another word of comfort I’m gonna yell!” Allison blurts out a bit loudly, making Myery frown.  
“…have you Hargreeves kids been raised as catholics?”.  
“Bold of you to assume we’ve been **raised** …”.  
Vanya shakes her head and steps in before the situation becomes unpleasant.   
“Thanks, girls, but there’s no need for you to make the effort. We can talk about something else. For example, I was just about to tell…”.  
“Greta” Lear fills in, and Vanya nods, almost effortlessly repeating the fake name.  
“…Greta that this morning I met…er…Lola? Yes, Lola”.  
“Lola?” asks Allison, abashed.  
“You know, the one you used to argue with all the time” Vanya snickers.  
“Oh!”. Allison nods, looking uncertain, as if she doesn't know whether to be happy or not with the turn the conversation has just taken. “How is, huh…how is she?”.  
“Fine, thanks” Myery concisely replies.  
“Could you please tell her I'm sorry? I’ve been terribly rude to her because of reasons, and…understandably, she didn’t take it too well” Vanya tries to say, but Lear cuts her off.  
“Relax, I'm sure she's already forgotten about it!”.  
Myery notices her friend sounds more enthusiastic than she would have thought to see her be in such a situation, but dismisses the thought right away.  
“Yeah, Greta’s right. Where is Lola supposed to find the time to hold a grudge against you, anyway? This is being a very stressful time, for her…you know, being back here, so many memories…your father dying, you guys starting to come out from everywhere…”.  
“How come you’re saying nothing about Five?” Allison retorts with a giggle, surprisingly leaving both Lear and Myery splutter in dismay.  
“F-five?” Lear whispers as Myery looks in alarm at the actress.  
“What about him?”.  
“He’s back!”.  
Vanya looks dismayed too, as her gaze darts between her sister, who keeps languidly smiling, and the two women standing next to their table.  
“Shit, you didn’t know?” she breathes.  
Lear and Myery, both dumbstruck, silently turn to look at each other, and judging by how bewildered Vanya’s voice sounds when she calls them up, they probably don’t even bat their eyelids for some time; she cannot know, but they’ve had been carrying on a whole conversation with their eyes alone.  
“Girls?”.  
“F-fuck!” Lear manages to grit out, shaking herself out of the stupor, “That’s why Lola was acting weird! He’s back!”.  
“Wait, weird how?” Allison queries, and Myery frowns.  
“Edgy, evasive, snappy…sometimes nauseous…”.  
The two Hargreeves sisters exchange a fleeting glance, but keep their mouths shut. Allison looks like she’s having the time of her life.  
“Yeah…it all makes sense, now…” mumbles Lear, sounding engrossed.  
“This morning she gave me the impression of not wanting to talk about it” Vanya offers.  
“Well, it didn't exactly end well, between them…” Allison counters, and in a flash the mood gets so gloomy that Lear awkwardly looks down, Myery gets worried and Allison, once again, stifles a snicker taking a sip from her glass. Suddenly realizing the similarity between the abrupt ending of Five and Marben’s relationship and the one between her and Lear, Vanya violently blushes and clears her throat.  
For a small eternity nobody says anything. Then Lear reaches out to remove a paper napkin from the dispenser placed onto the table.

“All right, here’s the deal” she says, fishing a pen from her purse and leaning on the table to scribble on the wipe.  
“What deal?” Vanya blurts in an uncharacteristically shrill voice, while her sister leans over to try to catch a glimpse of what the blond woman is writing.  
“Yeah, what’re-”.  
Done writing, Lear closes the pen with a click and hands the napkin to the sisters.  
“This is our phone number”. Allison looks up at her, taken aback.  
“…yup. I'm not gonna call you, you're my sister's ex”. Lear scoffs.  
“So that’s why M-Lola can’t stand you!”.  
“Get your brother to call, you witty” Myery steps in with an obviously fake smile, snatching the napkin out of Lear’s hand and slipping it into Allison’s bag.  
“I was just kidding!” the actress giggles, looking at the red-haired woman with a false name fumbling with her purse as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Lear looks first at one sister, then at the other, and down at their glasses, one filled with what appears to be sparkling water and the other with something much stronger, finally understanding what's been off all along. Allison’s tipsy, Vanya totally oblivious. And judging by the way Myery grabs her by the arm, she must’ve realized too.  
“All right, **we're leaving**!”.  
“Jeez, I have to go too!” Vanya unexpectedly says, glancing at her watch. Her sister whines.  
“What? Noooo, already?”.  
“Sorry, I have rehearsal in the morning, and I need to study some more before going to bed…I hadn't realized it was so late!” Vanya explains a bit anxiously, as she gets up; then she turns to Lear. “Which way are you going? We could share a taxi!”.  
Lear gapes at her, Myery and Allison likewise.  
“Huh...we were just about to go drink somewhere e-”. Myery elbows her in the ribs, and Lear instantly yields. “Of course. Let’s go”.  
After a series of somewhat clumsy and hasty goodbyes, exchanged with more or less affection, Vanya retrieves her coat, her violin case and leaves with Lear.  
Myery and Allison watch them head out of the door.  
Myery then turns and prepares to extort some information from a drunk and lonely woman.

“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll be having my drink here” she says sitting down and abandoning her bag onto the chair vacated by Vanya. “Don’t get your hopes up, by the way, I’m not gonna sleep with you neither drunk nor sober. Just so you know”.  
The famous sister of her friend's ex-girlfriend raises her hands, implying she has no nefarious intent even if the dopey glance with which she accompanies the gesture makes everything strongly contradictory.  
“I’ll be a gentlewoman. Promise”.  
Even if in a bit uncoordinated way, Allison beckons a waiter, who immediately rushes: he’s bringing a tray on which the Old Fashioned and the Martini ordered by Myery stand out. The actress, hand still raised, looks at the poor guy, petrified with shame for having thought he had come to see her up close and with having to settle for someone else's drink of choice; Myery sees it all, and graciously welcomes the waiter with a smile to feign obliviousness. Once alone, she lets Allison pick which cocktail she prefers, and mentally rejoices when the actress reaches out to grab the Martini.

“So, is…everything okay, at the Academy?” Myery gently asks after a few sips, and Allison sends her a bleary gaze that somehow still manages to express wariness from above the rim of her glass.  
“Why are you asking?”.  
“I heard there has been a shootout at your house”.  
“But…we didn’t tell anyone…” the actress counters, sounding extremely confused. Myery shrugs and reveals the most harmless part of what she knows.  
“Bette found herself passing by the Academy, last night, and ran away as soon as the first shot was blown”.  
“It was a break-in” Allison acquiesces then, slightly slurring. If she knows who answers to the name of Bette or has deduced it through the process of elimination, Myery doesn't know or question.  
“No injured, I assume, since you’re not exactly looking desperate…”.  
“Just a few scratches”.  
“I’m glad” says the red-haired woman, and she truly means it, but she's stayed for business, and so, a moment later she throws across the table an innocent “I almost feel bad for the burglars. In the sense, you guys don't exactly make the average family, I’m sure they’re still wondering what hit them!”.  
“It wasn’t a burglary” Allison clarifies; Myery looks up at her, posing as shocked. “They were looking for one of my brothers…”.  
“It must be quite a habit, then. All your brothers are troublemakers”.  
Allison erupts into a shrill snicker that makes Myery jump in surprise, then. When she sees the nurse’s appalled face, the actress seems to realize how inappropriate she’s being, so she awkwardly forces herself to sober up.  
“To be honest, it doesn't happen as often as you might think”.  
“…I wouldn’t have thought”.  
At that point, Myery wonders if she hasn’t stumbled upon a great chance to get some answers for herself, in addition to those she has already managed to snatch for the Girls: across the table Allison is placidly sipping her Martini as she watches the coming and going of patrons or waiters, and lightly swings her head to the sound of music. Out of time. She looks as unsuspecting as she could ever be, and Myery decides she could as well try to get more personal.  
“You know, I’ve always wondered...what's with you and my cousin?”.  
Allison chokes on her last sip. It takes her a few coughs and a couple of paper napkins to recover.  
“Don’t know what you’re talking about”.  
“Right!” Myery scoffs. “You both claim you can't stand each other, and yet…no matter where we go or what we do, you always pop out and my cousin does something important for you or your family. It’s intriguing”.  
“Yeah, well…casualness, huh?” goes Allison with a forced giggle. Myery’s eyes are like steel.  
“I don’t believe in coincidences”.  
It’s the actress’ turn to stiffen, but since she’s getting more and more drunk, it just turns out to be grumpy and a little bit endearing.  
“I’m not sure where all this is supposed to be going, then…”.  
“Oh, you know damn right, sweetie. But I’ll make myself clear anyway, to avoid misunderstandings of any kind: are you following us? Or selling information about us to someone?” Myery whispers, leaning over the table. Allison deliberately blinks a couple of times as if to clear her vision, then squints hard and leans across the table too.  
“Who have you girls wronged?” the third of the Hargreeves asks in an unexpected bout of lucidity, and the red-haired woman just stares back with a deadpan expression.  
“A whole lot of dangerous people. Most of which are now dead, but not everyone”.  
“Like who?”.  
“Oh, you know, the bad guys everyone’s afraid of. The Seven Dwarfs, Oliver & Company, Scar and the hye-no, wait, Scar and the hyenas were freakin' insane, used to scare the shit out of me…”.  
“Wha-what you’re saying makes no sense…”.  
“That’s because you’re sloshed. Anyway, with all those hoodlums after us you understand we already have our hands full and really don't need to worry about you too…”.  
“’m not following you” Allison admits then, shaking her head too emphatically and making herself dizzy in the process. Myery reaches a hand out and grabs her before she can fall off her chair.  
“Fine, next question: are you rumoring her?”.  
“Who?” the actress snickers.  
“ **My cousin** ”. Allison’s face contorts in a contemptuous grimace, and she places a hand on her chest in a way which is spectacularly reminiscent of her brother Klaus.  
“ **No**!”.  
“Don’t act so outraged, missy, that’s how you usually get off scot-free when you need something!”.  
“I truly just happen to bump into you girls, by chance, I swear. And it’s not as if I ever asked her to help me…”.  
“Then it must just be her caregiving nature kicking in, every time…” Myery mumbles, sounding engrossed. On her part, Allison snorts.  
“ **Caregiving nature**?”.  
“Claire” Myery just says, and finally, Allison drops the sarcasm and looks down, pouting at the lonely olive lying at the bottom of her cocktail glass. Only then she does seem to realize she’s really drunk.  
“I think…I think I should go home”.

Myery takes pity on her and decides to escort her, not trusting to let her go alone.  
Allison insist on paying, then slips out of the bar hopping like a little girl, and when Myery catches up with her on the sidewalk, she has taken her heels off.  
They set off down the relatively quiet street, missing a few taxis that don't want to pick up a visibly drunk woman while Allison keeps hopping and singing to herself and Myery follows at a short distance, without letting her stray too much, for fear she'll get run over by a car.  
Not far from the bar, the red-haired woman gets distracted by the sound of violent retching coming from a dimly-lit alley to her left: she pauses for a moment to scan the shade, and the vision of Diego Hargreeves and a huge guy crouched next to someone - whose butt and skinny legs are the only, vaguely visible parts - hurling behind a dumpster on all fours catches her totally unprepared.  
“What’s wrong with this city?” she asks to no one in particular, looking ahead at her inebriated lump of responsibility, who happens to have found a snail into a flowerbed and has squatted down, barefoot, to coo and poke at the gastropod’s antlers.  
Then she resumes walking, unaware of Luther’s and Diego’s eyes which have risen just in time to catch a glimpse of swirling red hair before they disappear around the corner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...antoher reunion, yet again not between Marben and Five. I know it doesn't seem like it, but remember that I love you and I am not doing this to torture you. 
> 
> Tons of kisses.


	11. 4 (III).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: mentions of stalking, unhappy childhoods, kidnapping and murder.

On the taxi, Vanya looks at Lear and feels her heart painfully throb inside her chest.  
Paradoxically, she hadn't felt all that pain or guilt when more than sixteen years prior she ended their relationship...maybe because her Father had blamed the Girls for Ben's death and Five’s disappearance, and Vanya had been so naive to believe him…or maybe the story between her and Lear never did matter that much in the first place, and Vanya is now feeling in an uproar because it's been too long since she last took her medicines. Who’s to say.

Lear has grown into a stunningly beautiful woman, Vanya can't help but consider, despite her efforts not to. All the four of the Girls have, but it’s with Lear that Vanya has been close the most. She still vividly remembers how it used to make her feel, to intertwine fingers with hers, to blush under Lear’s palm as it tenderly cupped her cheek only a moment away from a kiss.  
She had been one of the best things that ever happened to her, Lear, the only truly positive presence throughout her teenage years. Vanya had only realized it once her Father's oppressive figure had stopped influencing her views and she had managed to form a few of her own. To be near the other woman, her blue eyes and her self-confident yet kind smile, is now making her feel like a complete idiot for having thrown away what they have been. Even though she’s currently in love with someone else.

“Are you okay?” the object of her thoughts asks serenely when they’re far from the bar.  
“Why is everyone asking me, today? Is it for a candid camera or something?” Vanya counters, sounding a tad accusatory as she frowns. Lear looks at her, confused.  
“What? No! Who do you mean by 'everyone’, anyway?”.  
“Marb-“.  
“ **Lola** ”.  
“Yes! Sorry. She…she asked as well, this morning”.  
Vanya throws a glance at the taxi driver, hoping with all her might he hasn't noticed her slip-up: since he keeps humming and looking ahead, the two women sigh in relief.  
“Well, I didn't mean to be intrusive...you just seemed troubled, that's all” Lear offers, sounding genuinely worried.  
“That’s because I was thinking about how...how I broke up with you” the last of the Hargreeves finds the courage to admit then, and immediately Lear’s face falls.  
“…oh”.

They’ve finally reached Vanya's house, and she finds herself searching for Lear's hand. The blond has kept silent for the rest of the ride, looking out of the window; an exchange of glances and Vanya knows Lear agrees to get off the taxi with her. So she pays the fare - all of it - and a moment later they’re both standing on the strangely deserted sidewalk although it not being that late at night.

“I’m so sorry for what I did, Lear. Please, believe me! It was deplorable of me to write that letter full of mean things and have it delivered to you. You didn't deserve that” Vanya says immediately, almost hastily. In front of her, the other woman doesn't seem to be uncomfortable, but it's still clear she'd rather talk about anything else. She doesn’t even bother to protest the use of her real name.  
“You were beyond yourself with grief, your brother had just died” goes Lear, eyes downcast, hoping to exhaust the topic and move on. Sadly, she knows that’s not going to happen: Vanya evidently needs closure for what has been left on hold between them, otherwise she wouldn’t have made sure to be alone with her. And probably, it's something she needs herself.  
“True, but that's no valid excuse for what I did! Please don't excuse me regardless. I let my Father tell me what to think and feel, and you got caught in the middle. This not only pains me, but makes me feel ashamed of myself as well” Vanya counters with urgency. Lear shakes her head and replies in the sweetest tone she’s capable of.  
“It's old business, Vanya, don't be so hard on yourself”.  
“How was the trial?” the younger woman asks in a strangled voice, then. A moment passes before the other decides to answer.  
“Easy. Your father used to be a very unfair man, in some respects, so testifying against him in court came naturally. The real problems were the ignominy and alienation that followed”.  
When their eyes meet, Lear reads utter confusion in those of Vanya. **Of course** Hargreeves made sure to keep his prized children in the dark about the scandal that swept him up!  
“After a couple of hearings, your father blackmailed our families. So we decided to end the cause asking the court to make him donate substantial sums of money to orphanages and structures housing indigent minors, as a fine, as well as obtaining restrictive orders that prevented him from approaching us ever again”.  
Vanya nods, at that, and Lear assumes that at least that part of the story isn’t new to her.  
“How was it possible for Dad to blackmail you?”.  
“He managed to dug up some awful history about Marben’s family. No one knows how he did it, but it was at that point we decided to back off: he knew too much about too personal things that no one wanted to see make the papers” offers the older woman, in a straightforward, concise tone she hopes will make it clear she’s not inclined to elaborate.  
“This keeps making no sense…” is Vanya’s confused comment. “Why did my Father even start to stalk you girls?”.  
“Did you ever ask him?” Lear scoffs, giving her a contemptuous, ugly smirk. The last of the Hargreeves just shakes her head, shrugging a shoulder and generally looking at a loss, so the blond woman sighs and lets the bitterness slip away. “Well, we... **think** he believed Marben had powers”.  
“Does she?” Vanya breathes, incredulously so. Lear already has the lie on the tip of her tongue.  
“No”.  
She’s only silent for a moment, so as to make it clear that the interlude is over, and fervently hoping not to seem too eager to leave it behind, she resumes the main topic.  
“Anyway, your father’s supporters targeted us for a while, after that. They were - and still are - numerous, the most dangerous of which own several newspapers across the world. At the first rustle of checks they seized the opportunity to sell us as interested in nothing more than money…so they made up every sort of bullshit about us, over the years, and fed them to the public. That's when we started with the fake names”.  
Vanya looks genuinely confused.  
“But after I wrote the book about my Father's secrets-”.  
“We kept using and changing them for other reasons. At first, it was a matter of carrying on school in incognito, later…it became a necessity. For work”.  
Unexpectedly, Vanya bursts out laughing. Sincerely so, and it would be a pleasant sound to hear, if only Lear could figure what there is to laugh about.  
“I didn't know appearing in some video clips and in a couple of photo shoots required a stage name!” Hargreeves Number Seven giggles, but when her dark eyes find the other woman’s blue ones, laughter and smiles die down. “…I’m missing something, am I not?”.  
“Something quite big, indeed. And I'm not talking about a dick, you know that interests me little or nothing”. This time, Vanya’s laugh sounds a little scandalized.  
“But wait, I read somewhere you got married, in Vegas, to that famous actor who pla-“.  
“Yeah, forget about that. It’s already over and it should have never happened in the first place” Lear cuts her off, with a voice as cold and sharp as glass shards.  
“…all right” Vanya tentatively acquiesces, taken aback from the other’s sudden hostility.   
“I can’t truly tell you everything, but…look at how I'm dressed”. At Lear’s invitation, Vanya’s eyes slide over her nurse outfit. “You think someone who poses for photoshoots would put on scrubs for kicks?”.  
“You’re not a model” the younger woman whispers, understanding dawning onto her delicate features.  
“Neither a nurse…I mean, I have the certifications to be a nurse, but that’s not my real job”.  
“Do I need to worry?”.  
Lear shrugs.  
“I know all this mystery doesn't really work in my favor, but I can assure you I'm one of the good guys”.

Vanya nods, then takes a step back once again.  
“So how did you girls get by…after the scandal?”.  
“Holding each other up. We were practically raised as a family, and we make a great team. Luckily, with our real families’ help we were able to prevent the denigration from hurting us too much”. Then, as if occurring to her only at that moment, Lear adds “Your book helped too”.  
“You and…Lola are actually the firsts not to be mean, about it” Vanya says, looking down; with a hint of bitterness, Lear realizes she’s believing it without trouble. “I…I never really wanted to buy what my Father said about you girls. I did it, at first, because the people I was most close with were no longer there and I felt lost...then I realized that my Father didn't care to provide us neither comfort nor safety, but only to point out how those who had listened to you and challenged him had ended badly”. The estranged Hargreeves shrugs, as if wanting to shake off the unpleasant memory. “It was another low blow. But made me comprehend he wasn’t to be trusted ever again. And automatically I started asking myself questions. It was my rebirth”.  
“What can I say...I'm glad at least something good came out of that awful business” Lear comments after a brief pause, sounding hoarse.  
“I’m sorry, Lear, for everything. For what you girls had to go through, for the harm my family caused…and for giving up on us. I want you to know that I hold as a precious memory what we once shared. And that if I could go back, I wouldn't make the same mistake”.  
“Wow…thanks, Vanny” blows Lear, looking touched; Vanya is as well, hearing a nickname she’s always loved, but by which no one has called for many years. “But…I fear that's precisely the problem. **If** we could. But we can't. And we’re not the only ones to think so”.  
Once again, Vanya's eyes turn pained, and Lear knows her innuendo hasn't gone unnoticed; she leans down to chastely kiss Vanya’s cheek, and the adorably flustered look she gets in exchange makes her heart flutter. Lear suffocates that tender feeling, reminding herself that it's been over for years, even though their love story’s end mark has been written only now.  
They softly exchange a goodbye and some awkward thanks, and then Vanya leaves. Lear watches her disappear behind her doorstep, before heading to a phone booth and call another taxi.  
As she walks along the deserted street, she wipes away from her cheek a traitorous tear and thinks she’s no longer sure she wants Marben and Five to see each other again: if taking a leap into the past, pretending for a few minutes to be a carefree and enamored teen again has been tough for her, she doesn't even dare to imagine what it might be like for Marben.

-

In yet another part of town, Marben drives recklessly in search of 4535, Calhoun. The guilt is unbearable even if reason keeps reminding her she cannot leave her work to keep up with Klaus's poor choices or misfortune.  
‘ _What if it's too late_?’.  
‘ _What if they took him elsewhere_?’.  
‘ _Am I really risking_ _ **everything**_ _for that fool's ungrateful hide_?’.  
Marben asks herself all these things, as she presses even more on the gas pedal. Unfortunately or quite the opposite, she doesn't need to reach the motel to find the answers she seeks.

“He escaped”.

With a yelp, the blond woman jolts and swerves, avoiding at the last minute completely losing control of the car and falling off track. Eyes following the hand, the wrist, the arm that have reached out to help her straighten the steering wheel, Marben finds the quiet and sad figure of Detective Eudora Patch - a bloody hole on her cerulean-covered chest - sitting in the passenger seat which was empty, just a moment before.

“Diego’s brother. He escaped” Patch repeats, once Marben has pulled over. The nurse just looks at her, heartbroken.  
“But you couldn’t”. The ghost looks down and shakes her head no, gulping. “I’m sorry, Detective”.  
“Could you tell Diego this wasn’t his fault? I know what he’s like, he'll feel guilty”.  
“Then you also know he won’t listen to me and torment himself anyway”.  
“Please, will you tell him? You two are close…that's why you never liked me. I used to be harsh on him”.  
The blond softens.  
“Believe me, Detective, hadn't I known that we probably would have been very cool with each other. It's just...I tend to get protective. Or so I'm told”.  
“I can work with that” Patch acquiesces.  
“Is there anything else I can do, for you?”.  
“Take care of him, okay? He thought I was the better suited one to do so, but I'm afraid…I let him down” asks the ghost, looking up at Marben with big, sorry eyes.  
“I won’t leave him alone” the nurse says, reaching out to grasp the ghost’s hand and squeeze it. She's not sure what the Detective is asking of her, whether to help Diego through the mourning process or to be a better girlfriend than she has been - Marben supposes her protective nature can be misleading, at times; despite this, Patch keeps looking sad, but a tremble of her eyelids tells the nurse her touch is actually being perceived as comforting.  
“Farewell, Patch”.  
“Bye, Lola”.

Detective Patch turns towards the door, which is contoured by bright light beams sneaking under the rubber seals. She hesitates for a moment before grabbing the handle, then she pulls it, gets out of the car and lets herself be enveloped by the light. A moment later the door closes, the night is pitch black and desolate again, and the street’s visible through the window.

With a trembling sigh, Marben blinks and her eyes go back to being normal. She starts the car again and inserts the blinker to get back on track.  
She truly is too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your lovely support! 
> 
> Love.


	12. 5 (I).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: mentions of home invasions, intoxication, disturbing behaviours toward children (not due to paraphilic intents), kidnapping, underage sex, sexism, toxic masculinity, death and mourning. Nothing graphic.

[ _Chapter Soundtrack_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNC1R_E9L4w)

“…and here's your change, Nurse Jones! Come back soon!”.  
“Thank you, Lidia. Have a nice da-”.  
Marben turns around, a tray loaded with paper cups full of coffee and a large box of assorted donuts in her hands; as soon as she sees who’s in line behind her, however, she abruptly stops talking.  
“Oh! H-hi…” stammers the woman, looking at the same time disgruntled and surprised to see her.  
“Hello, Allison” Marben sighs, while she assumes she’s been all too lucky not to have run into her until then.  
“What a coincidence, to find you here!” the actress offers; the nurse hints an unfazed smile.  
“You say that every time”.  
“You, huh…you look great!”.  
“You too, if that was an honest compliment”.  
“Yes, well…”.  
Marben gives Allison a once-over: last time they saw each other they both were in bridal gowns, for a photoshoot. Thinking about it makes the moment even more strange.  
Clearly short on pleasantries and uncharacteristically looking as she’s feeling self-conscious, Allison glances around - perhaps searching for escape routes like a window to jump out of, Marben thinks. Against all odds, however, she seems to find the inspiration she needs to say something else, and even surprise the nurse.  
“Wanna grab a coffee?”.  
“I already have six, thanks” Marben simply says, drawing the attention on her disposable tray loaded with cups; Allison stares at it with wide, embarrassed eyes, and the other woman takes pity on her.  
“Go order, I'll wait outside. We can walk together for a bit, if you like”.

On the sidewalk in front of Petrola’s bakery, standing in a warm pool of sunlight, Marben looks down at herself, and when she hears Allison leave the shop and catch up, she shifts her gaze on her: Guns N’ Roses oversized t shirt dress, black leather jacket and combat boots versus stilish sweatpants, flowy long coat and high heeled ankle boots. They couldn't be more different, even though they both look great. Yet, it feels subtly pleasurable to make Allison feel so bashful.  
‘ _Just to feel pretty for once I'm not in scrubs or with a small child smearing food and drool all over me_ ’.  
“How are you guys doing? I heard someone broke into your house, the other night…” the nurse asks as they start walking.  
“Yes, they were looking for...my brother…” goes Allison, looking lost in thought. She rouses immediately, though. “Speaking of which” she mumbles, rummaging into her purse with her free hand, and fishing a little notebook and a pen out of it; Marben takes the actress’ takeaway, to let her free to scribble. “Here, take this. It’s the Academy’s phone number. In case you…I don't know, need anything…”.  
“You’re as subtle as a brick through the window” Marben says, piercingly staring at the other woman and seeing right through what she’s trying to do; she decides to take the piece of paper anyway, just to mess up a bit with Allison’s hopes, so note and takeaway pass of hand and the two women resume walking.  
“We’re all fine, anyway. Thanks”.  
“Great”.  
“…as I told your cousin last night”.  
Allison’s eyes are knowing and a little bit defiant, when Marben looks at her again.  
“Oh, yes. My...I mean, **Tess** told me about your meeting”.  
“All of it?” the actress asks. The nurse senses an oncoming change in the conversation’s development.  
“She told me you were hammered, but didn’t give me any more leverage, relax”.  
Allison’s lips morph into a smirk, but her brow furrows and she moves slightly away from Marben, straightening her back and squaring her shoulders. The nurse gives her a sideways glance and begins a mental countdown, to the moment when they’ll stop chatting about this and that and will inevitably start arguing.

“What is it, exactly, that you girls are doing here in town?” Allison enquires after a moment, indeed, in a tone that is meant to sound playful but underneath which Marben manages full well to detect the intent to debate. It’s her turn to stiffen.  
“Nothing you need to worry about”.  
“Alright, try to answer this, instead: why do you always have to act this unwelcoming when I’m involved?”.  
“Because I’m jealous of your bubble butt” Marben sighs, and surprisingly Allison takes the bait, abruptly stopping on her tracks to overtly stare at her backside with eyes as wide as saucers.  
“But your tush is supreme!”.  
A couple of bystanders turn to look their way, but the nurse refuses to worry about whether they’re checking her bum out or not.  
“Thank goodness for that, since my boobs stopped growing in seventh grade” she grumbles, stacking the coffee tray over the box of doughnuts and grabbing the actress' wrist with her free hand, to drag her away before their speech can attract more attention from the crowd.  
“They’re not the only things that stopped growing…” Allison impishly counters, and Marben decides she’s had enough.  
“That’s it, I’m gonna deck you. Ma’am, please hold the donuts!” she orders to a lady who happens to be strolling down the sidewalk, dumping what appears to be breakfast for a regiment in her arms, then whirls on Allison looking like she’s out for blood.  
“No, **wait**! Listen, why don't you just answer my question?” shrills Hargreeves Number Three, recoiling and raising her free hand up to shield herself.  
“Just joking, dear, thank you, have a nice day” Marben pivots once more and recovers doughnuts and coffees, patting the shoulder of the stranger to which she had entrusted them only a moment before. She then walks away, and Allison almost stumbles onto her own feet not to be left behind.  
“To pick up where we left off, I act unwelcoming because it’s none of your business, what we’re doing here” the nurse says as if nothing happened, once the other woman catches up to her.  
“It is, instead, given that yesterday Tess asked me anything and everything about the guys who attacked us, trying to be oh so sneaky but failing!”.  
“In just two days those two have made themselves responsible for at least two shootings, t…hree murders and, guess what, **your brother Klaus’ kidnapping, which of course happened without any of you assholes noticing**! And since Diego plays vigilante but can't catch shit, and all you guys combined make a formidable but sadly useless team of crime-fighting superheroes wannabe, we want to know who we might have to watch our backs from!”.  
“How many chances are there, that you girls might run into those two loonies?” Allison asks after a brief pause, sounding disbelieving and a little bit amused too. Marben refrains at the very last minute from urging her to mind her own business.  
“One never knows. And you’re scandalous, by the way: I just said your brother has been kidnapped and all you can think about is telling me I’m wrong!”.  
“There are a lot of things I don’t know about each of my brothers” the actress says, sounding bitter and sporting a faraway look as she does so. Marben is just partly impressed.  
“Yeah, well, there’s no excu-“.  
“Did you know our Father used to videotape us in our sleep?”.  
Marben is taken aback by the non sequitur, so she mimics the other woman and stops as well. “No. And that’s sick”. Marben wishes she would be capable of sounding less judgmental, but what Allison just said is making her edgy, for some reason other than the immediate disturbance aroused by the idea of an old man spying on sleeping children.  
“I discovered it when Pogo showed me surveillance footages dating back to our childhood. In the midst of that, there were entire tapes of us sleeping, too” Allison goes on, oblivious to the other woman’s inner turmoil. “Five rarely showed up, in the last of them…I figured it could be because he had taken to sleep somewhere else, before going missing…”.  
And just like that, Marben’s worry acquires meaning: if Arsegreeves had cameras installed in his kids’ bedrooms, to keep an eye on them, surely he had seen her inside Five's, snuggling up to him on his bed...  
Allison keeps on talking, but Marben isn’t paying attention, wrapped up in the revelation as she is.  
The damn geezer had known about her and his son, now she’s sure, and yet he had done nothing to effectively separate them…why?  
‘ _Oh. To keep an eye on me…and have me at hand’s reach_ ’.

“LOLA!”.  
“WHAT?” Marben barks out at the sound of her - fake - name being called out in such annoyance. Beside her, Allison is glaring daggers.  
“I asked you a question. Several times, in fact”.  
“Repeat it once more, then”.  
“Was my brother spending his nights with you, at the time?”.  
Embarrassment forcefully supplants Marben’s shock.  
“Look, you don’t want to embarrass us bo-“. But, of course, Allison does.  
“What were you two up to?”.  
For a moment, the two women just stand on the sidewalk, holding their respective breakfasts, and stare each other down. Allison seems to be ash the same time eager and so very nervous about the answer, and Marben thinks it’s laughable.  
“What do you think?” she defiantly asks, then, invading the other woman’s personal space. As a response, Allison’s eyes shot wide open and her nostrils flare.  
“ **How dared yo** -“.  
“Relax, Motherhen, it was safe, very much consensual and **underage on both parts** _,_ thanks for your kind concern!” Marben grits out, unfazed, but also irked by the other woman’s overbearing attitude. “We didn’t get to do much anyway, we huh…didn’t have enough time”.  
As soon as Marben's tone darkens and her words hint at Five’s disappearance, Allison seems to deflate and realize what she has just done, as if snapping out of a stupor. She opens and closes her mouth several times, looking for something to say - hopefully an excuse, even if Marben can sympathize about how she would be feeling protective of her brother - but in the end, the nurse feels like they’ve already talked too much.  
“Listen, just forget this whole meeting happened, we’ll never understand each other” Marben sighs, tired despite it not being even mid-morning, and makes to leave. Allison, however, calls her back.  
“Can I rest easy, at least?”.  
“What do you mean?”.  
“That you being in town doesn’t mean trouble ahead?” the actress looks almost embarrassed to ask, but does it all the same.  
“It was perfectly fine here, before all you Hargreeves gathered up for the Monopoly man’s funeral, you know?” Marben peevishly shots back with an eye-roll, and resumes walking.  
“Fine, whatever you say” Allison snorts, staying still and watching at her retreating back. “You’d look good in a pair of high heels, anyway!”.  
“And you with purple hair. I don’t have time for heels or fake nails. I’m a nurse, I save lives” it’s all Marben has to say in that regard, and even if they’re already far away from each other, she can hear Allison’s indignant scoffs.  
“There’s nothing wrong with heels and fake nails!”  
“As with their lacking thereof!”.  
Rising her right hand up above her head, Marben shows the whole street her middle finger; Allison scoffs once again, then whirls and goes to call herself a taxi.

-

“Your boss wants you to do him”.  
“He’s not my boss, and I don't see how-“. Marben lets the soiled napkins fall into the bin and spins around, recognizing the voice only when she’s halfway through the rebuttal.  
Diego looks like shit - as it’s his habit to tell others when he’s in the mood to joke, but today he blatantly is not, and it breaks Marben’s heart to use his very words to describe how he's looking, all the more to be divesting them of any playfulness to render them truth. He’s leaning against the ER’s entrance door jamb, hunched shoulders and red-rimmed eyes that stubbornly keep looking down, shunning hers. He’s not even toying with one of his knives, and his voice has been considerably quieter than usual, when he addressed her, moments prior.  
Marben knew the news of Detective Eudora Patch’s demise would have been devastating on Diego, but she’s a big softie and no matter how much she prepares to see the people she loves suffer: every time, when life shifts from hypothesis to facts she finds herself unarmed and vulnerable.

The nurse moves closer to her friend, silently, cautiously, and speaks in a soft tone, reaching out a hand to take one of his bigger ones.  
“Diego…I’m so sorry, sweetie. So, so very sorry”. Diego nods.  
“C-could yo-u…just…” he murmurs, hinting to himself and then Marben with a vague gesture of his other hand, which moves back and forth through the space between them; when his teary eyes finally look up there’s something in the woman’s kind features, fair hair and pale eyes that somehow feels deeply comforting, and brings him to melt in the embrace when she gathers him up into her arms.  
They both hold onto each other with everything they have, making the hug seem more like a stranglehold than a huddle, with Marben that doesn’t say anything and lets Diego crush her because she’s aware he’s not trying to hurt her, and Diego that feels a dire need to hide his pitiful face, red and grimacing and wet with tears, holding and letting himself be held so tightly to feel Marben living and breathing against his own body. They stand there and hug, even if in some ways it hurts, and they don't seem willing to break away. Not even when the sound of footstep and confident voice reach their ears.

“What's up, mamacita, are you angry because the surgeon ate your favorite do-“.  
The steps come to an abrupt halt, their sight must have caught the Aspiring Chief of Medicine by surprise.  
“Oh. Spandexman”.  
Marben mentally swears. Diego, on the other hand, doesn't seem like wanting to hold back.  
“You call names the women you sleep with, as well? And tell me, do they like it?”.  
Marben thinks Diego's instinct to protect her is as adorable as it is out of place, but she lets him pull her behind himself all the same, to make him vent a bit of his repressed anger.  
“No, big baby, I make them speechle-“.  
“ **Percy** ” Marben thunders then, baffling everyone - except for herself - into silence. “Please. Not now”.  
Aspiring Chief of Medicine turns an inquisitive glance on her, but Marben refuses to add explanations of sorts, limiting herself to look unwilling to tolerate bullshit, and in the end Percy clenches his lips into a grim line and nods briefly, backing off.  
“Stay away from her, ‘boss’” Diego advises, earning himself the cocking of an eyebrow from the other man.  
“Or?”.  
“Or she’ll give you a damn lesson. And then I'll give you another one”. Diego flaunts a knife he fished from somewhere. “See this? Get lost or it will go through something you’d miss”.  
Just at that moment, a short resident comes to dissolve the tension with her incredibly high-pitched voice.  
“Boss, the patient from 203-“.  
“My goodness, would everyone just **please** stop calling me boss?” Percy blurts out, exasperated, pinching the bridge of his nose between two of his fingers.  
“Shut up, numbnuts!” the Real Chief of Medicine reproaches him, passing by like a meteor, shooting straight to go have a smoke outside.  
Marben sizes the chance to remove Diego from the general madness the hospital and her colleagues provide every day, and gently pulls him aside, taking him to seat on a free stretcher as if he was one of her patients.

“Hey…sorry about that” she softly tells him as she draws a curtain and grants his vulnerable state some privacy. All of a sudden, Diego looks inexplicably sullen.  
“He’s a scumbag. You know what it means, to call a girl mamacita?”.  
“To objectify her. But he doesn’t mean it that way”. At Diego’s skeptical glance, Marben answers with a suggestive one of her own. “I know him well, Diego. He has breathed toxic masculinity all his childhood, as you did yourself, but he’s always able to cast it aside when it counts. He’s been a true gentleman, the only time we went out together”.  
“You...you went out wi…with… **that**?”.  
“Don’t play fool. He may get on your tits, but he still is a good-looking, funny, and somehow sexy guy”.  
On the ER’s table, Diego is showcasing the face of a man who’s just had the worst epiphany of his entire life.  
“Jesus...you like assholes!” he breathes, horrified. In response, Marben impishly smiles at him.  
“Face it, Diego: I too need to sleep with someone, from time to time. And you can wipe that look off your face, now, nothing at all happened with him”.  
Diego’s face does indeed look relieved, after that, but it’s short-lived.  
“What are you doing here, anyway? Have you come all this way just for a hug?” the woman softly asks, as if she was trying to blandish a shy child into leaving his mom’s hand and go play with his peers. Diego looks down.  
“How…how do I do it?”.  
“What do you mean?”.  
“How do I grow used to her being gone?”.  
Marben’s face goes slack with shock and heartbreak. She’s having a surreal déjà-vu of her fifteen-year old self asking the same question to her Dad over the phone, and wishing nothing else than to be able to spare the kind, soft man in front of her the pang that comes with the truth…but she can’t lie, Diego deserves to get better. So she takes a deep breath and murmurs the ugly truth.  
“You don’t. So maybe you can…resort to what you did…you know, when it happened to your brothers”.  
‘ _What if he tried to join the police to cope with the memory of the never carried out investigations on Five’s disappearance and Ben’s death?_ ’ an evil little voice inside her head horribly suggests. The lost look Diego gives her may be the confirmation she doesn’t want to get.  
“Oh, sweetie…come here”.  
Diego seems eager to make himself small to better fit into the embrace, and Marben endeavors to find a way to wrap as much of him as possible into the circle of her arms, as her hands caress his nape and his back, her breathing stays calm to lull him into a sense of calm - even if is distressing to see him grieve. She knows he’s not gonna ask nor get any comfort from his siblings, and that he probably dares to look for it in her arms precisely because they don’t have that big of a history. It’s always been like that, for the Hargreeves, Marben has seen it happen more or less with all of them, over the course of the years: they’d rather die than communicate with each other.

“You’re not gonna feel guilty for her death, you hear me? She wouldn’t want it” she softly murmurs against Diego’s hair at some point, without even hinting at freeing him from the embrace. He doesn't seem to mind, and continues to hold her just as well.  
“True. Too bad she went to that motel because I told her my brother was missing…she wanted to help”.  
“Wait...did you know about Klaus?” Marben confusedly queries, at that point leaning back just enough to search Diego’s eyes, which reflect the same confusion.  
“No, I meant Five, then. I learned about Klaus later. He’s still missing, by the way”.  
“Which one?”.  
“Klaus. Relax”.  
“I don't feel like relaxing at all, knowing that Klaus is still missing. I’m not gonna worry about Five, though, it’s evident he turned going missing into a hobby” Marben scoffs, and with that she considers the subject exhausted, thus resuming the previous one. “Listen, Diego, you may have advised Patch to try and do things your way, meaning without following the rules…but she had the last say, in it. If she went to that motel and took action alone it's because she chose to do so, she believed it was right to act swiftly. Unfortunately she paid the highest price, but…had you been there, had you wanted to make her change her mind, you know very well you wouldn't have been able to. She wouldn't have listened”.  
Diego looks down, snorting a small, sardonic laugh.  
“It's...it's too ironic she had to pay so dearly for the only time she did listen to me…”.  
“You’re right. But that’s just how life goes, some times” Marben dejectedly admits. Then she pats his cheek, sighs and focuses on worrying about the living.  
“What about some coffee, sweetie? And a donut?”. Diego makes a face and tries to shake his head, but she has just the perfect rebut for that. “You know you’ll eventually have to eat something other than raw eggs…”.  
“…s-so what, now you’re giving nicknames too?” he offers in the end, and it’s heartwarming to hear his voice is a little less shaky.  
“Shut up, you love it when I spoil you!”.  
“Yeah…god knows I do” Diego murmurs, as he tilts his head to softly kiss her left cheek. Marben’s eyes flutter closed for a moment, while she savors the gesture as the rare, precious thing it is. Then she squeezes his hand and with a sweet, sad smile leads him to where her friends and coworkers are having breakfast on an ER’s table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was so long that I had to split it into two parts! Next one will be a bit shorter, but still full of feels. What do you think will happen? :) 
> 
> Did you like 'big' sister Allison in full protective mode? Whatever your answer, i think it is imperative to agree that poor, sad Diego deserves a hug...why on earth does he find the sight of Marben so reassuring, though?


	13. 5 (II).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: trauma, mentions of death, war and privacy violation.

[ _ Chapter Soundtrack _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABRxvbZnHpk)

On her way back to the flat, Marben can't stop thinking about Diego's dark, grieving eyes.  
The pain caused by the memory is so sharp she’s feeling stunned, so when a familiar-looking man staggers off a bus while clutching something dark to his chest, not far ahead, she's not sure she actually recognized him. The man disappears right away behind a stone flower bed; Marben curiously approaches the bus stop, her pace gradually speeding up as she hears rhythmical thuds and, inexplicably, sees sparks flying from behind the plants.  
Her perplexed eyes weren’t mistaken, it’s Klaus, and he’s alternatively slamming a black briefcase onto a bench or a nearby low wall; under Marben's astonished gaze, the no longer missing Hargreeves throws away the case, which lands on the sidewalk in a puff of flames as he screams and clenches his fists.  
Marben is astonished. She watches him stop and fall to his knees, shake, and then take to run his hands over the cobblestones, as if to dig or caress.  
Maybe he's hallucinating.  
Maybe he’s impossibly high.  
Whatever the case, she can't leave him like that, she just can't.

“Klaus? Hey, Klaus...come on, honey, stop...you’ll get hurt” she gently coaxes, crouching beside him and prying his frantic hands away from the sidewalk. They’re bloodied. She rapidly checks them, fearing Klaus may have already cut himself with some glass shard, but there are no scratches under the red, and her friend is looking up at her with big, blue and anguished eyes full of tears.  
“It’s me. **Marben** ” she whispers caressing his damp cheek. Klaus squeezes his eyes shut, then, curling up in a fetal position on the pavement, openly bawling.  
Heedless of the passers-by’s shocked gazes, they stay put for a while, Klaus folded in on himself and crying while Marben whispers sweet nothings to him, stroking his hair, his head resting in her lap; little by little Klaus' wails distemper into hushed sobs, his tears thin out, and Marben notices how emaciated he is.  
“Come on, rockstar, come on. Let’s get you home” she murmurs in a comforting tone, as she struggles to put him upright.

She doesn't ask what happened as they walk toward the Academy, not wishing to force Klaus to relive whatever reduced him in such a miserable state. This automatically leads her to think about the briefcase abandoned on the pavement, burnt, crumpled. Unmistakable. The sight of it hasn't been a new one, to her.  
Marben shakes both memory and worry off, forcing herself to face one problem at a time, and focuses on keeping Klaus on his feet, girding him around the waist with his arm wrapped around her own shoulders, encouraging him to hold on just for a little bit longer.

When they reach the Umbrella Academy and no one answers the door, Marben opens it with a kick and a muttered curse, stepping in without a single care in the world about the racket or property damage. On wobbly legs, she drags Klaus up the stairs and, upon request, to a specific bathroom, in which she elbows the toilet lid closed to offer her friend a seat.

“I…I should probably take a bath, little Marben…” Klaus utters, reaching out for her as she moves away a little; again, Marben resolves to deal with the door through a kick, while grabbing Klaus’ outstretched, bloodied hand.  
“Yeah…good idea, rockstar”.  
She carries him to the bathtub, and helps him to sit on its edge; she can’t see what Klaus’ face is doing, while she’s turned to open the bathtub’s faucets, but a little huff tells her he has at least registered the nickname.  
After she’s plugged the tub, Marben helps Klaus undressing - he being so unresponsive as to not complain about being seen naked - and when the water is ready she pours some bubble bath in it, diffusing a good scent she hopes will be calming for her distressed lump of a friend as it is for her.  
Entering the tub, Klaus shakes, but he’s steady on his feet, and manages to lie down stretched out amidst the bubbles with little assistance. At that point, the woman squats down and crosses her arms on the white edge of the tub, reclining her head on top of them to melancholy look at the catatonic man.

“You want me to help you, Klaus?”.  
As if forgetful of her presence, Klaus jolts, and after a slight shake of his head, he turns his teary gaze on her. He fleetingly thinks Marben looks like she can understand, like she won’t reproach, or judge, or demand for him to spill everything. If there’s someone he can open up with, it’s her.  
“Would you believe me if I told you I’ve fought in the Vietnam War and saw the love of my life die, there?” he whispers, and his words hit close to home. Marben has to grip the tub’s edge to steady herself.  
’ _That blasted briefcase_ … _’_ she thinks, screwing her eyes shut to shield herself against the pain in Klaus’ haunted gaze, but hers as well.  
“I’m so sorry, Klaus. So very sorry” she murmurs back, feeling tears press under her eyelids.  
“Yeah, well…it sucks”.  
“I know. I-”. Taking a deep breath, Marben tells herself she can at least partially confide in Klaus, because nobody in his family ever listens to him, and that's horrible and unfair, but exactly what she’s in need of. With a sigh, she goes on. “I lost my son’s father…before finding out I was pregnant. He died without even knowing. They never met”.  
“Oh…then I’m sorry too, little Marben”.  
Reaching out, Klaus pats a wet hand on Marben’s head; then, something like puzzlement, even if a bit detached, makes his face ripple.  
“Wait…does this make me an uncle?”.  
She stares at him in utter confusion.  
“…I’m not with your brother anymore and we’re not related, so…no?”.  
“Oh…pity. I would have liked to meet the little tot. I still have to be introduced to my own niece, you know?”.  
“Yeah, that’s probably because your sister is _-_ ” ‘ _a bitch’_ , the blond thinks, but then seems to remember that Allison and Klaus used to share some sort of intermittent camaraderie, as kids, and refrains at the last moment from saying what she wants. “…been through a lot, lately. Maybe she’ll let you meet her little girl, when she'll get permission to visit. Anyway I can't do the same with my son, he's in London with my parents”.  
Klaus nods, his face sad and his eyes distant again. It’s both a haunting and haunted look, the one he’s sporting. Marben recalls having seen it in the photos from her old school books, on the careworn face of Esterina the Birkenau survivor. Or in many other places, on-site, on people who experience war in their day-to-day present. It’s a thousand-yard stare.  
The woman throws a glance at the clothes abandoned on the floor, and notices they really look like rumpled, threadbare military attire. Like the shiny dog tags on Klaus’ bare chest, and the new tattoo on his left shoulder. The one on his stomach, instead, even if new, has nothing to do with the army.

“Are you gonna need help, rockstar? It's getting late and I have some things to do before going to the hospital for my shift…”.  
“No, no…I’m fine…”.  
“You sure? I could ask someone-”.  
“Really, I’m fine. Don’t worry, I’ll just…soak a bit, I guess…”.  
“Call, if you need anything, all right?”.  
“Yeah…thank you, little Marben”.  
“Love you”.  
“Love you too”.  
So Marben silently exits the bathroom, leaving the door ajar.  
Not having Klaus’ tormented eyes and naked, thin body in front of her is not the complete relief she’d been hoping for.  
In any case, nothing can prepare her for what she sees as she crosses the Umbrella Academy’s dimly-lit mezzanine.

Mom's dear silhouette shows her its back, resting too still on a borne settee, with its head tilted to one side and one wrist outstretched, torn open and displaying wires to the most unlikely audience Marben could ever think of: a chimpanzee, in a shirt, tie and reading glasses.  
Caught unprepared, Marben fails to keep her aplomb and ends up stumbling on a carpet, uttering a muffled scream. The chimp abruptly diverts his attention from his work and looks at her with unbelievably human eyes.

“Good afternoon, Miss” he offers, as if having a stranger he has not seen enter inside the house was the most normal thing in the world.  
‘ _Good point, I could never win the lottery of the weirdos against a machine-maid and a talking ape’_.  
“H-hello” Marben stammers, completely disregarding her traitorous brain’s commentary.  
“Can I help you?” the chimpanzee asks with the utmost courtesy and formality, but Marben doesn’t miss the note of impatience in his tone. Perhaps her natural aversion to monkeys is showing…  
“No, thanks, I was leaving” she answers, eager to get lost. On second thought, however, there is something she needs to ask of him. “Wait, actually…I just took Klaus home…”.  
“Ah, yes, Master Klaus. I haven't seen him in days”.  
‘ _You’re yet another uncaring asshole, then_ ’.  
As if by magic, the uneasiness dissolves, and all is left for Marben to feel is anger.  
“…right” she grits out. “He's not feeling well, I'm afraid he's rather distressed...he's taking a bath, right now. Could you please check on him in a bit? I need to get to work…”.  
“I shall take care of it, Miss. Thank you for your help, it’s been invaluable” the ape reassures her, nodding and hinting a smile, but remaining stiff and motionless, with his gnarly-knuckled paws resting on the handle of his cane, frozen into an attitude that screams distrust.  
“No problem”.  
Marben really can’t wrap her head around what’s happening. If she weren’t so concerned about Mom, she would probably pause to ponder how surreal is to be conversing with a primate in comparison far behind her on the evolutionary scale. Did any of the Hargreeves ever tell her about this housemate of theirs, by any chance? Klaus? Diego? Five, all those years ago?  
_Five_. She needs to get out of his house before they stumble upon each other. But first, another little question.  
“What happened to…Mom? Is she okay?”.  
The chimpanzee keeps impassively looking at her for a moment more, then he sits down in front of Mom once again and retrieves a screwdriver from the borne settee.  
“She will be. Every now and then, her programming deteriorates and an adjustment becomes necessary”.  
“Oh. Thank goodness you’re here to help, then. Mom’s too precious to be lost” Marben tells him with an open smile. He evasively looks at her out of the corner of his eye.  
“Indeed”.  
“Gotta dash, now. Sorry for the intrusion, have a nice day!”.  
“You too, Miss”.

For the few meters that separate her from the outside world, Marben feels chased by the ape’s gaze. She gets goosebumps and hurries her pace as much as she can without making her exit look like the escape it actually is.  
While in her brain the name _Charla Nash_ obsessively reverberates, she thinks she doesn't trust the chimp’s inexpressive eyes, nor she believes a single one of the words he said about Mom’s programming.

-

Were anyone to search the words 'Allison Hargreeves' in any library's archive, they could find all sorts of informations about her - photos, the list of movies she starred in, more or less personal data scattered here and there through a slew of interviews, the whole story of her divorce from Patrick and the ensuing legal battle for Claire’s custody - as is to be expected for all the famous people that grew up under the limelight rather than sunlight.  
Allison knows well how it works.  
Yet she finds herself checking how impressive is the amount of things the fans can find out about her for fear of having just dreamt of those actually being in the public domain, because she can't believe what she sees - or rather, what she **doesn't** see - when she types the names she wants to investigate on.

According to the Argyle Public Library’s archive, Diana, Lear, Myery and Marben - in alphabetical order depending on their surnames, which Allison does not remember by heart but are quickly provided anyway by old judicial records - attended the Royal Academy of Music of London, which brought them in the city in 2002 that ended with them embroiling the eminent Sir Reginald Hargreeves into trial, and once grown up, they decided to become models, in spite of the education and prestige they had already managed to hoard during girlhood. It’s a bit of a shame, but ultimately nothing new, since Allison has even found herself posing with them, once or twice.  
So she makes the longest phone call from the days when she still was unmarried, that phase during which she was trying to establish herself as an actress with the phone as the only mean to keep alive a romantic relationship, and her personal assistant confirms that even Los Angeles’ archives cannot supply anything more about the Girls.

It’s unnerving. There’s no record of anything about them that isn’t related to Sir Hargreeves' trial or the sporadic appearances on the magazines or in some video clip. Not even the awarding of nursing degrees to any of the names Allison remembers having used to address the Girls with over the years - and that none of those names transpire from anywhere only makes everything more suspicious. So why did Allison see them work as nurses in at least three different hospitals under false names?

‘ _There must be at least something true in what Myery told me last night...’_ the actress thinks as she intently stares at the microfiche reader’s screen, as if wanting to force it to reveal what lies behind the living mystery the Girls are proving to be.  
For a little while more she racks her brains over what the whole thing might mean, but then she has to throw in the towel and worry about a far more impending worry.  
Leonard Peabody.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to each one of you, a million times. Your presence and support truly warm my heart. You're precious.
> 
> Love.


	14. 5 (III).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: none, for once.

[ _ Chapter Soundtrack _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XHDuKXrAwU)

At lunch, Diana leaves the hospital and walks to Griddy's, allowing herself a short break before diving back in to cover a colleague for a couple of hours.  
As she nears the donut shop, she stumbles upon a secluded couple speaking un hushed tones and before she even realizes what she's doing, embarrassment makes her lower her head to hide behind a bunch of bins.  
Diana’s in the middle of a mouthed swear word, when she recognizes one of the two voices and refrains from turning to leave, deciding instead to peek through the space between two bins with all the discretion she’s capable of.  
Before her incredulous eyes, Agnes, the doughnut shop’s waitress, lets the Uruk sitting next to her pick her hand and put it on his knee, before covering it with his own.

Mouthing another vicious curse, Diana hurries to think of something.

-

On her way back to the hospital from a home care, Myery takes a shortcut through a motel’s parking lot and ends up stumbling upon the singular vision of Diego and Klaus Hargreeves trying to pick an ice cream truck’s door.  
Everything seems to unfold in slow motion and in a surreal mood, as the woman’s baffled brown eyes leave the street to look at the two, and the brothers stop what they’re doing to gaze back, appearing guilty and scared like children surprised by their mother with hands shoved deeply into the cookie jar.  
Then Myery frowns, shakes her head, and shoots straight while the bubble bursts.

“What the hell are those two idiots doing?” she mumbles, without really wanting to know.

“Wasn't that little Marben's cousin?” Klaus mutters, turning to follow with his eyes the flamboyant orange car. A moment later, however, he’s pulling at his air and whirling toward his brother. “Oh my god, you think she's gonna go to the police to report us?”.  
“It’s Lola, you jackass!” Diego grunts back as he finally manages to get the truck’s door open. “And get a move on, I’m not staying here losing sight of my targets, let alone risking being arrested with you!”.  
He has no time to worry about what Marben's cousin will do, he has Patch's murderers to catch.  
And if while getting on the truck he forcefully slams a hand on the horn...well, it's not because he feels nervous. He's just pissed off about his car’s tires and having been grazed by a bullet, which is going to force him to let Klaus drive.

-

Shortly after, unbeknownst to the whole world, time stops, and the only ones to be left out from the spell are a boy in school uniform and a black-clad woman.

“Neat trick, isn’t it?”. The boy turns to look at the woman, licks his lips and then approaches with his hands tucked in his shorts’ pockets. “Hello. Five” she says while removing her veil and sunglasses. “You look good…all things considered!”.  
“It’s good to see you again” he answers, sounding so credible he compliments himself.  
“Feels like we met just yesterday…of course you were a lil’ bit older, then! Congratulation on the age regression, by the way. Very clever. Threw us all off the scent”.  
“Ah, well, I wish I could take credit! I just miscalculated the time dilation projections and…oh, you know. Here I am”. Five raises his hands in the air, showcasing his youthful appearance. Handler is unfazed.  
“You realize your efforts are futile. So why don’t you tell me what you really want?”.  
“I want you to put a stop to it!” Five mockingly says, linking his hands at the small of his back to copy the woman’s stance.  
“You realize what you’re asking is next to impossible, even for me. What’s meant to be is meant to be, that’s our raison d’être!”.  
“Yeah? What about survival as a raison?” asks the kid, producing a gun from under his jacket and pointing it straight to the woman’s chest. Handler shrugs.  
“I’ll just be replaced. I’m but a…smaaall cooog in a machine” she sing-songs, twirling a finger in the air. She then steps closer to the kid, forcing him to lower his gun to adjust the aim. “This fantasy you’ve been nurturing about summoning up your family to stop the Apocalypse, is just that. **Fantasy**! Imma say, though, we’re all quite impressed. Your initiative, your…stick-to-it-veness is really quite…quite something. Which is why we want to offer you a new position, back at the Commission. In management”. Five scoffs again, incredulously so, this time.  
“Sorry, what’s that now?”.  
“Come back to work for us again, you know that’s where you belong” Handler shots back with what somehow sounds like urgency.  
“Well, it didn’t work out too well, the last time!”.  
“But you won’t be in the correction division any longer! I’m talking about…the home office! You’d have the best health and pension, and an end to the ceaseless travel!” she chuckles. “You’re a distinguished professional in…schoolboy shorts, we have the technology to reverse the process. I mean, you…you can’t be happy like this!” Handler concludes, daring to place her fingers on the gun’s barrel and pushing it down. Five doesn’t fight it, and she knows she has at least managed to tempt him.  
“I’m not looking for happy” he grits out. She pointedly looks at him and reaches out to stroke his cheek.  
“We’re **all** looking for happy. We can make that happen. We can make you…yourself again”. Five huffs and looks away, so she sweetens the pot a bit more. “Plus, there's something new I haven't told you about, yet...”.  
“And what would that be? Casual Fridays?”.  
Handler dismisses the snide remark with a delighted laugh and a prideful, devious gleam in her eyes.  
“We’ve finally solved the Namibia Boat problem forever”.  
“What? **How**?” Five whispers, boggled.  
“Our agents found and captured some of them during a subversive action in Texas”.  
The woman can see the boy is intrigued, she knows how much he’s proud of his professional skills, and therefore readies herself to gloat for neutralizing not one, but two threats in just one day.  
“Aren't you curious to face who's been giving the Commission and even you, our best temporal assassin, such a hard time for years? It’s the culmination of an era, Five! You can't miss the celebrations for our final triumph, you’ve been part of the team that made it possible!”.  
“I have more urgent business to deal with, at the moment. Like, what about my family?”.  
“What about them?”. Suddenly, Handler's voice lacks the suave and bewitching tone it has maintained throughout their conversation.  
“ **I want them to survive** ”.  
The woman haughtily looks left, then right, and at the kid’s face again.  
“All of ‘em?”.  
“ **Yes**. All of them!”.  
“Well…I’ll see what I can do” Handler says, as she puts her sunglasses back on and outstretches a hand. “Do we have a deal?”.  
Five looks down at her palm.  
“One thing”.  
He walks to Hazel's gun and strips it of its magazine, throwing both parts into the fields but in opposite directions; he tampers the trajectory of the bullet pointing straight to Luther's chest, and only then returns to the woman, to shake her hand.  
They disappear in a blue gleam, and time starts flowing again as if nothing happened.

-

“Hey, did Five call?” Lear anxiously wheezes, peeking at Myery from behind a stack of brand new catheter trays. The red-haired nurse makes a face and shakes her head, approaching her friend to offer help.  
“Not yet, as far as I know…”.  
“All right, it’s time for you two to tell me everything” Diana pipes in as she finishes to write down the prescription she’s been working on for the better part of the last five minutes and then hops to seat on the nurses station’s counter.  
“Long story short: Five came home early, we found out the other night from Allison and Vanya, who we met at a bar. Lola didn't tell us anything because she's a lil’ shi-“.  
“ **Because this situation must be understandably upsetting, for her** ” Myery hisses, brushing Lear off with a murderous glare.  
“Oh, heck…” it’s Diana’s terse commentary. Hard to say if she's impressed by the revelation or just being absent-minded. Whatever the case, Myery professes to agree with her.  
“Precisely. In fact she's been avoiding him like the plague ever since she found out…”.  
Lear emphatically nods.  
“But it doesn't matter, because we personally took good care of solving the problem, giving Five’s sisters our phone number and telling them to get him to ca-”.  
“Hey, why is Mr Taylor in the parking lot?” asks a voice from behind Lear’s and Myery’s backs.  
“MR TAYLOR’S IN THE PARKING LOT?” Diana shrieks, panicking and ungracefully stumbling down the counter even before having seen who asked the question. Lear and Myery also turn abruptly, almost sending the catheters to the floor, and all the three of them are faced with a smiling Marben who presumably just got on duty.  
“Yup! He and his walking frame got in traffic’s way, and every time someone from the line honks at him he stares back and simply goes ‘HOOOOONK!’”.  
“ **BUGGER**!”.  
Diana runs off without saying anything else, and Marben just leaps aside to dodge her. Once her friend is safely far, she turns to the other two with an impish light in her blue-green eyes.  
“He's no longer in the parking lot, Mr. Taylor, I took him back to his bed. But Bette doesn't need to know, he ran away while she was distracted” she confesses. Then she notices Lear’s and Myery’s wide eyes. “What were you three confabulating about, anyway?”.  
“I caught the boss and his brother in law trying to kiss, like…five minutes ago!” Lear stiffly blurts out, and Marben gives her a perplexed glance, pointing over her own shoulder with a thumb.  
“That’s impossible, five minutes ago I was giving him a slap with a run-up because he had just dared to call me with a whistle”.  
Myery turns to look at her cousin so quickly she almost gives herself whiplash.  
“…the kind of whistle men do thinking they’re making you feel special?”.  
“No no, the ‘come home Lassie’ kind!” Marben contemptuously grunts. “Now, who’s coming down to the ER with me? Another nurse is needed”.  
Myery gives the catheter trays back to Lear - who doesn’t complain just because she’s too busy being grateful about Marben having already gotten distracted - and volunteers.  
“Me. Bette and Greta are almost off”.  
“See you at home, then. Let’s go”.

At the emergency room, the two cousins immediately get sent to assess the newly admitted patients: when they find themselves in front of Klaus, an unconscious Diego laid out on a stretcher and a massive guy in tow, they both snap.  
“What happened, this time?” lets out Marben, bypassing exasperation and going straight for despondent.  
“How did you two manage to get yourselves so roughed up in under an hour?” Myery shrills in parallel; three incredulous pairs of eyes settle on her, but just as Klaus makes to open his mouth and answer, the red-haired nurse whirls on her cousin. “I saw Diego and Klaus trying to steal an ice cream truck on my way back from home care. Or at least, that's what they seemed to be doing”.  
“ **What?** ”.  
“In that I had no part whatsoever!” the big bloke is eager to clarify. Everyone ignores him.  
“We found out his car tires had been punctured in the middle of a chase! What were we supposed to do?” Klaus urgently pipes in, hands flying with emphasis as he looks terribly guilty under Marben’s stony gaze.  
“Go home, that's what!” she readily retorts, indeed, subsequently dismissing both Klaus and the miffed giant with a wave of her hand and turning to her cousin. “All right, I’m gonna ignore the awake ones. They’re all yours”.  
“WHA’…”.  
Myery makes to protest, but a pained grunt from Diego forces them all to drop the nonsense and rush to the stretcher. Klaus arrives first.  
“Hey, bud!” he says softly, picking up one of his brother’s hands and offering a smile when Diego manages to crack his eyes open. “How are you feeling?”.  
“Why do you ask?” Diego mumbles in utter confusion, “Are you a doctor?”.  
Klaus’ face is so stunned that in spite of everything Marben and Myery can’t help but burst into a fit of snickers. Ignoring them just to prove - to no avail - the point of still being very piqued about their rude dismissal of moments before, the massive guy steps forward and approaches the freshly awakened Hargreeves.  
”You and Klaus had a car crash, what do you remember?”.  
“The…the ambulance ride…”.  
All of a sudden, Marben and Myery aren’t laughing anymore.  
“We didn’t call an ambulance, I drove us” says the giant after a brief pause, sounding and looking uncertain about his brother’s mental faculties. In response, Diego shifts his increasingly confused gaze among the bystanders.  
“But I-I heard a siren…”.  
“That was Klaus!”.  
Myery’s, Marben’s and Diego’s heads whirl to look at Klaus, who simply smiles his best innocent smile.  
“Sorry, I was nervous”.  
Despite being dizzy for having turned his head too abruptly, Diego finds himself laughing and doesn’t stop even when, with a sharp pang of pain, his left arm reminds him of his bullet wound: he simply grabs at his limb and continues to laugh, making terrible faces halfway between pain and amusement.  
“What the fuck are you laughing at? You got hurt, be quiet” Marben firmly reproaches him, appearing right at his side as if she was capable of materializing, but her tone is soft as she pries his hand away from the injured arm and she presses on it to stall the blood loss, ignoring his pained hiss. She’s decided she’ll be kind to him, even though he pissed her off, since his ex girlfriend just died and he came to the hospital because Mom is offline.  
“You’re such a thrash mouth, little Marben! I fear you might have a bad influence on me!” Klaus pipes up form somewhere behind them. Marben just scoffs.  
“Please! Bad influences used to be altar boys before you came into town!”. Diego starts laughing again, even if a little hysterically, this time.  
“Blimey, he looks like he’s going crackers” mumbles Myery, and Marben couldn’t agree more.  
“Yeah, he does…must be the shock. All right, see if you can get me a doctor who’s not Percy, okay? This one needs stitches”.  
“Fine. What about Klaus?”.  
“I’ll check him in a mo’”.  
Myery nods and then leaves in search of a doctor, while Marben and Klaus help Diego get as comfortable as possible on the stretcher.  
For some time, the Hargreeves are miraculously not of hindrance as the nurse goes looking through the drawers for the supplies she’ll need while assisting the doctor into suturing; in fact, Klaus and Diego keep to themselves, bickering like two teenage girls about who’s looking the most ‘beautiful and damaged’, after the crash, and the big guy just stands there, with the air of someone who’s being broody or feeling constipated.  
When Marben finally approaches Klaus to inquire about his wellbeing, the massive stranger comes forward and, as soon as she opens her mouth, he talks over her.  
“He called you…Marben” he says hinting at Klaus with a jerk of his head. Marben ponders whether to demand of him to call her Lola, but she’s too curious to see where he’s trying to lead the conversation. “We used to know another girl with that same funny name, back when we were kids, you know?”.  
Marben just stares at him.  
“Let me guess, would you - by chance - be Luther?”.  
Klaus bursts into a coarse laugh, at that, and Marben decides she’s not gonna waste her breath to teach her new name to the clueless, massive lump of man in front of her, who has spent who knows how many years in isolation and is probably struggling to readjust to terrestrial life.  
With a sigh, she then turns to look at a mortified Diego.  
“Is this how adult life is supposed to be?” she asks, all sourness and disenchantment. Her leather-clad friend looks up at her like a lost child.  
“Unpredictable?”.  
“No, FULL OF BULLSHIT!”.  
Marben proceeds then to send Luther to ask an intern for a stethoscope, and watches from afar with Diego and Klaus as the intern in question bursts into tears and runs away, oblivious Luther in tow who tries to stop him and apologize for having being rude.  
“There. One less fool to deal with” she approvingly says when they’re both out of her visual range.  
“Hey, what’s wrong with that guy?” Diego asks, pointing at where the intern stood just a moment prior. Marben doesn’t look up from his torn and threadbare black sweater, which she’s inspecting in search for the label.  
“He lost an entire supply of brand new stethoscopes, yesterday, and the Chief of Medicine’s been giving him hell since then”.  
“How are you going to visit me if you don’t have one?” Klaus pipes in.  
“Nurses don’t give physicals. And besides, mine’s right here” Marben explains, producing a stethoscope from behind a box of disposable gloves. “Now we just have to wait fro the doctor to join us”.  
“Oh…and what should we do, in the meantime, the three of us? A game of strip poker, maybe?” Klaus asks with a thrilled smile on his face.  
Marben wonders if the universe isn’t somehow plotting against her.  
“I’M IN!” it’s Diego’s overenthusiastic response, complete with a raised hand. Not so shocked, after all.  
She winds the stethoscope around his neck and leaves.  
“Have fun”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Klaus anxiously mimicking the sound of a siren is not mine, I took the idea from a tumblr post. It was so cool I couldn't just not include it! So, even if I couldn't trace the original post to give the author the deserved credit, it's not mine!  
> 'Mr Taylor' going HOOOOONK in the parking lot is also not mine. 10 points to whomever recognizes the reference!  
> Shout-out to the kind soul who made the show's original scripts available on 8Flix.com, as well, they spared me a nervous breakdown when dealing with the dialogue between Five and Handler. 
> 
> I realized that although I told you 'By the end' would be shorter than 'By your window', by now we've actually almost reached the same word count...ultimately, this story will have fewer but longer chapters than those of the previous one, and will end up having a higher word count. Trust me to put up a mess of these proportions!
> 
> As always, thank you. If you didn't get bored with 'By your window', if I haven't scared you with what I just said...you truly are brave, and I love you!


	15. 5 (IV).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: mentions of death, murder and loss.

  
  
  
  
  
“Oh, OH! They’re here, you may uncork!” Lear yells through the front door when she spots Marben and Myery climbing up the last flight of stairs; she looks like a little girl on Christmas Day.  
In the flat, Diana’s struggling to pull the cork from a bottle of what looks to be sparkling wine. Which is why on the coffee table in front of the couch, four flutes await lined up.  
“Hey, what’s the occasion?” Marben bewilderedly asks as she dodges a cheerful Sunny to go hang her bag and jacket. The cork finally comes out with a loud ‘pop!’ that makes Rum bark and Lear clap, as she comes forward to help with the glasses.  
“I may have encouraged Agnes to elope with a Uruk, today!” Diana excitedly chirps, as if she were announcing the opening of sales season.  
“ **What**? Are you mental? They’re dangerous!” immediately goes Myery, sounding hysterical.  
“And what are we, gummy bears?” Diana jabs, giving her a pointed look and a wine-filled flute, which the red-haired woman begrudgingly accepts. “Come on, sit down and I’ll explain everything”.  
Marben lets her eyes search the lobby, looking for her kids, but Diana meaningfully points at the ceiling, letting her know that Grace and David went to play with the fifth floor lady’s children. Marben crouches down, then, and lets the dogs lick and poke at her face with their wet noses.

“All right, so…I went to Griddy's, on lunch break, and guess what? I caught Agnes and the Uruk guy on the back, cooing like lovebirds!”.  
“Oh…you didn’t play matchmaker, then…” Myery considers, as she perches on one of the armchairs. Diana makes a face.  
“In a way I did, but I can’t take all the credit. Basically, they were there holding hands and talking about how nice it would be to move to the countryside, about birds nesting, or some shit like that…”.  
“Oh, by Jove!” comes in a shocked and somewhat mocking laugh from Lear.  
“That's what I thought too!” Diana emphatically replies, leaning toward her from the sofa; Marben doesn’t appreciate their tone, and advancing to go stand between the fireplace and the coffee table she makes it immediately known.  
“Hey, you two, quit bitching! I remind you that all it took for you to hook up with your most relevant SOs were an occult book written in ancient Aramaic and an endless LARPing session at a Star Wars convention, depending on who we’re talking about!”.  
Upon hearing of the most memorable of her first dates, Lear puts on a dreamy look and lets out a sigh.  
“Not even Harrison Ford himself pulled Han Solo’s role better than Brad…”.  
Myery turns toward her miffed cousin.  
“And you made an awesome gender-bending Luke Skywalker…”. Marben’s sulk darkens even more.  
“Hate the bastard. I only liked the cape” she grumbles. Diana waves off her comment with a flick of her wrist and takes the floor again.  
“Anyway, neither Agnes nor the Uruk had the stones to take the next step and bring up eloping, so I improvised”.  
“Meaning?” Lear inquiries.  
“I waited for the Uruk to leave, for Agnes to go back to work and then...pretending not to have seen anything, I went in to order my coffee, proceeding to whine a load of bull about wanting to drop everything to run away with my boyfriend without actually having the courage to”.  
“Just like that, to introduce the topic in a subtle way!” Myery laughs, and Sunny’s blond tail starts rhythmically thumping against the floor as she detects the red-haired woman’s amusement. Diana blushes.  
“I couldn't think of anything better!”.  
Marben still struggles to see what the point is, as he leans against the armrest of Myery’s armchair.  
“All right, so you tried to coax Agnes into eloping with a psycho beeeecause…”.  
“Because if he leaves, his colleague will be forced to go back to where she came from and get a new partner!” blurts Diana, as if she were explaining the obvious to the slow-witted. Instantly, Myery’s head perks up.  
“Like that time at Fort Wayne…” Lear breathes, turning to look at the two cousins, awestruck.  
Marben winces at the mention of Fort Wayne, but she doesn't let the sudden sense of alert distract her from what Diana has to say. She already has a rebuttal ready.  
“Exactly! She’ll be wasting precious time that could be enough for us to pay off our debt and leave undisturbed!”.  
“Not all Uruks work in team, though. What tells us this one won’t decide to continue on her own?”.  
“Maybe she’s no longer used to working alone...and after all it was worth trying, right?”.  
“Damn right! Bottoms up for Diana, who’s been a fucking genius as ever!” Myery cheerfully jumps in, raising her glass, readily imitated by Lear.  
“Yeah, cheers!”.  
Marben finds herself taking the last flute left and downing it, thinking ‘ _Oh, what the hell_ ’. Diana, however, is not done with the back and forth, and is already picking up the newspaper which has stayed face down on the sofa all along to show it to the Girls, as she blows off the wine’s alcoholic, burning sensation.  
“Only one last wild card to deal with, then. Who is this guy?”. The front-page shows the photo of a forensic agent in a white coverall taking pictures of a corpse sprawled on a seedy alley’s concrete. “The police claim they thought no one else apart from Agnes, the tow truck driver and his missing son was involved in the case, yet-”.  
“The guy in the photo was killed by a bullet compatible with the guns found on the Dunlendings” Marben steps in, eyes glued to the paper; her friends jolt and whip their heads toward her, looking inquisitive, alarmed, confused. With a sigh, she confesses. “He had nothing to do with the Uruks or the Academy. I was the one who killed him”.  
“ **YOU WHAT**?” Lear thunders, almost falling off her armchair; Myery and Diana start spluttering, more or less intelligibly but with such an abandon that both Rum and Sunny look up from the carpet to stare at them, tilting their heads.  
“He followed me into that alley and cocked his gun first. I had to protect myself…” Marben offers, sounding categorical at first but rapidly becoming hesitant. The others sense there’s something else, but only Lear has the heart to ask for further explanations.  
“And?”.  
“I recognized him for the loose end he used to be. He was Turandot’s brother”.  
“Oh…now what’s carved onto his chest makes sense…” Diana dismally concedes after a brief pause, looking down at the photo.  
Lear and Myery are petrified. They know Turandot’s story, and what it means for their friend; what doesn’t add up is what the ghost’s brother was doing in town, and why was he on Marben’s trail.  
“So there was another murderous asshole in town? What the fuck is going on, why are all the scumbags of creation converging here?” Lear exasperatedly grits out. Marben turns to give her a steely gaze, but her voice sounds unquestionably self-satisfied as she answers.  
“He seemed confused when I turned his way, he was probably looking for someone else…too bad he stumbled upon me, and with his gun already aimed. He left me no choice”.  
“Is Turandot here?” Myery asks, not bothering to look around to see by herself; Marben immediately sobers up, and casts a fleeting glance at her invisible friend by the fireplace, nodding. “I’m sorry for your brother”.  
“Truly?” Turandot boggles: it’s not being addressed directly, to amaze her (the Girls often do that with her, Ben and Fulvius, using Marben as a kind of simultaneous translator for ghosts), but Myery’s attention.  
“She asks if you mean it” Marben reports to her cousin, who frowns.  
“…not really. My Uncle still feels terribly guilty for not having been able to save your life, back in the days…but whatever”.  
Once again, Turandot turns wide, dark eyes onto Marben, who just shrugs and offers a slight smile.  
“Why do you think he insisted on calling me like you?”.  
“So you used the gun from the crime scene to make this guy’s death look like it was the Uruks’ doing…carving on his chest the same motive he used to sign his killings with when alive, just to mess up a bit” Diana summarizes, gaze fixed in front of herself as she rhythmically rotates a wrist, her hand drawing circles in the air as if to indicate the facts’ unfolding.  
“Something like that, yes” Marben shrugs.  
“Where’s the murder weapon?”.  
“Into the sea. Tossed it from the docks, as far away as I could”.  
“Forgive me for doubting, but would you swear you didn’t waste the Dunlendings as well? Because we should know it, if you were going apeshit…”.  
Diana’s blue eyes finally rise to intercept Marben’s ones, her words earning her a piqued stare.  
“It wasn’t me. And anyway, I huh…promised to only kill out of proven necessity, from now on”.  
“Right. Sorry”.  
“Can we rest easy, then?” Myery asks after a moment, turning toward Diana who sighs too but is ready to answer.  
“Only time will tell. We gotta wait a few hours to be sure…in the meantime, we can keep laying low and hope my plan works”. Then, she gives Marben an impertinent smile. “So do try not to kill anyone else, will ya? Because if they bust us before they part ways we end up straight to Isengard. Again. And this time we'll be as good as gone”.  
As Marben greets Diana’s newborn sass with a sullen look; Myery, who’s been frowning, distractedly nodding and staring at the carpet while pinching her chin, offers something to meditate on.  
“Hold on a sec, if they’re Uruks and they wanna take us to Isengard…does this make us the Hobbits?”.  
“All right, I’m gonna go have a smoke” Lear mumbles, then gets up to retrieve cigarettes and lighter, slithering out of the door.  
As she leaves the flat to the sound of Myery and Diana howling ‘They’re taking the Hobbits to Isengard’ out of tune, she totally misses Marben’s curious glance, as well as Turandot’s timid titter.

When the time for a cigarette passes without Lear coming back, Marben visits the flat on the fifth floor to check that Grace and David are behaving, and then joins her friend on the roof, finding out that sweet Sunny preceded her.  
Lear’s lighting the second-last cigarette of the pack, seated on the ledge with her feet dangling as Marben herself likes to do when she goes there to be alone.  
“You all right?”.  
“Yeah. Just…thinking”.  
Marben sighs and sits down beside her, patting the ledge; Sunny doesn't feel like getting on it, but moves to sit behind her anyway, conveniently away from the cigarette whose smell bothers her, yet enough to lean against Marben's shoulder blade.  
“About Brad?”.  
Lear purses her lips and looks down.  
“I can't think that…even Turandot's murderer got what he deserved, in the end, and I…I’m still not getting justice for the love of my life”.  
“I’m sorry, Lee…it’s sodding unfair”.  
“It really is”.  
Down in the street the usual early evening traffic jam has arisen: Marben watches as a guy leans out of a taxi’s window to yell at the driver at the top of the line, who apparently stopped at the yellow light. It helps her not to think about who she lost, and how she keeps seeing people she loves face her same nightmare. Diego, Klaus, Lear. As if her own mourning wasn’t already enough.  
“I'm not even sure I wish for you to see Five again, you know?” Lear admits with a little scoffing sound; when Marben turns toward her, she looks inquisitive. “Myery and I met the Hargreeves sisters at the bar, the other night…”.  
“I know, she told me”.  
“Well, I ended up escorting Vanya home, and- **and nothing happened** ” Lear stresses through clenched teeth, cheeks reddening and blue eyes widening in response to Marben’s appalled ones. “Because it wasn’t meant to rekindle anything, only to…end our relationship with dignity, I guess. For us both to explain our reasons”.  
Marben nods.  
“Did it make you feel better?”.  
“In a manner of speaking. Even though I had long since moved on, knowing she didn't really mean what she wrote in that blasted letter has been a relief...on the flip side, her being happy with someone else made me think”. Lear tosses the cigarette butt over the ledge, with a bit too much force. “What will become of my feelings toward Brad if I fall in love again? I can’t let myself simply forget! But at the same time, why can’t I be the lucky one who gets to be deliriously happy?”.  
“Because life can be a bitch and fortune’s blind” Marben meekly yet bluntly says “But this doesn't mean you have to give up or refrain from loving”.  
Lear takes her time to process those words, then shifts on the ledge to orient her whole body toward her friend.  
“Are you ready? To love again after Davie’s dad…and the Gravedigger as well?” she timidly asks. Marben can’t help but stiffen and divert her gaze, but she doesn’t shy away completely.  
“I’ll never get over their deaths, it simply wouldn't be possible. But…I think if I were to feel connected to someone again I wouldn't do myself a favor by pulling back”.  
“Five?” Lear tries to suggest.  
“Don’t be ridiculous” Marben just says, because she can’t let her friend know she wonders every day about how green eyes and sweet, cheeky dimples may have fitted into an adult face: it’s not Lear’s or anybody else’s business, if Marben has been speculating about how Five’s voice may be sounding like now that he’s a man, how tall he’s become, if he still eats sweets like the mad and has retained his taste for pet names.  
The two women exchange a glance, somewhat knowing on Lear’s part and falsely oblivious on Marben’s, then share a timid giggle, at the end of which Lear doesn't fail to notice that Marben hasn’t denyed anything.  
“Don’t worry about me, Lee. After what happened to David’s dad and to…’the Gravedigger’, as you insolents like to call him, I know I’m capable of handling anything life might throw on my way. Sentimentally speaking, of course”.  
“I wish our lives would be easier”.  
“Me too…but apparently, we can’t hope on that”.  
“I never asked, because I know you would have told me, had it happened...but did they ever come to you… **after**?”.  
“No” Marben whispers, feeling suddenly grief-stricken.  
“Did Brad?” Lear quietly pushes on, a moment later. Marben dejectedly shakes her head.  
“Neither. I guess it must’ve been because she had no unfinished business holding her back…”.  
Lear seems to crumple on herself, then, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing her lips together not to let a sound slip out of her as she buries her face behind shaking hands.  
“What is it?” Marben asks with urgency, reaching out for her.  
“She had asked me to marry her, right before leaving for her last mission…” escapes Lear’s lips in a wretched sob. “I had said yes”.

-

“What the- **put that down, it’s me**!” shrills Diego, perched onto the windowsill with his uninjured arm outstretched in front of himself, looking like someone who has never stared down a gun’s barrel in his life. “Don’t shoot!”.  
Marben lets out a shaking breath and lowers the gun, as her right hand frantically gropes in search of the door’s handle. She ends up not needing it, the door closes on its own. Her fumbling doesn’t go unnoticed, however, and Diego gives her a puzzled look.  
“Bedroom’s a mess?”.  
“Rum and Sunny, the dogs” the woman readily lies, her true priority being to keep the children hidden, and immediately changes the subject. “Anyway, why are you sneaking into my house through the window?”. She’s not gonna ask him how he found out were she lives. She surely doesn’t want to know.  
“Why have you got a gun, that’s what we should be discussing!”.  
“Oh, shut up. Four young ladies into a city full of scary people will need to defend ourselves somehow!”.  
“Try putting locks on your windows, maybe?”.  
Marben interrupts her approach to the window to look at him in bewilderment.  
“…do you have locks on your windows?”.  
“No, but this is about you! **Focus**!” it’s Diego’s flawless logic, explained with an impatient grimace and excited gesturing from his good hand.  
“Maybe you’re not completely wrong…after all your brother used to sneak into my dorm via fire escape, when we were kids. That’s how the troubles with you Hargreeves started”.

With a shrug, Marben turns her back to him and wanders right up to her bag, abandoned on the cabinet next to the front door. Diego exploits the moment to sit down onto the kitchen counter and then jump off it, ungraceful but also unseen, so he can pretend it never happened.

“Why are you here?” Marben asks, digging through her bag. Diego looks down, at the tip of his shoe running along the gap between two floor tiles, and his voice goes soft, low.  
“I…wanted to thank you…and your cousin as well, for not having reported me and Klaus to the police. You know, for stealing the ice cream truck”.  
“You guys are lucky you’re cute” she says, throwing him an exasperated look over her shoulder. He huffs a little laugh.  
“Klaus told me you brought him home, this morning…thanks for that too”.  
Finally done with whatever she’s been doing, Marben turns and approaches him at the kitchen counter, once again.  
“Keep an eye on him, will you? He can be hermetic, those rare times he doesn't feel like talking, but...I think it would do him good to have you on his side. Klaus is going through a lot, and…he loves you very much, in his own way”.  
Diego cocks a curious eyebrow at her, but says nothing and nods. The woman then sighs and extends toward him what she’s been clutching to her chest, probably what came out of her purse.  
“Here, try this”.  
It’s a blue and black striped sweater, folded, smelling new. Diego looks at it as if he had never seen one and didn’t know whether to caress or eat it.  
“What, don’t you like it?”.  
“I huh...”.  
“Oh come on, just because it's not completely black?” Marben blurts out with such an emphatic eye roll Diego thinks it must’ve been painful. He rushes to grab the sweater, not to pass for a jerk, but then catches a glimpse of the tag and gets nervous.  
“No, I was…how do you know which size I wear?”.  
“I checked it today, when your brothers brought you to the hospital. This one you’ve got on is past the point of salvaging, by now” Marben pointedly replies, pulling here and there the black, ruined sweater he's wearing to test the mendings.  
Diego looks down at the item of clothing once again, feeling moved, and for a moment the woman in front of him revels in the feeling of not leaving him abandoned to himself, now that Mom isn’t there to help; he then starts to fidget, giving her small, fleeting glances, and again she misreads them.  
“Now what, you feel shy?”.  
“I need help with this god damn brace!” Diego grits out, red in the face and scowling in shame.  
“Oh! Right!”.  
Marben helps her friend take off the brace and the old, torn sweater, to carefully move his injured arm and put on the new item, all the while laughing in her sleeve so as not to be seen or heard. Once Diego is fully dressed again, she fusses over him like if he were a kid, straightening both the new sweater and the restored brace.  
“There…no more tears or botched sewing. Much better”.  
“I like it” he softly acquiesces as he looks down at himself, sounding mildly surprised.  
“Even if it’s not completely black?” Marben innocently asks, and when Diego lifts his gaze and sees her impertinent smile they share a small laugh. “Looks good on you, a little color” the blond says right after, her eyes and voice soft; Diego’s hand finds its way to the back of her head, to gently pull her forehead against his lips.  
“Thank you”.  
“You’re welcome, sweetie” Marben smiles, patting his hip, and then pulls back. “How are you feeling?”.  
“Painkillers are wearing off…”.  
“Want one?”.  
“No, thanks, I’ve taken enough for a lifetime” Hargreeves number two - literally - grumbles, and Marben’s gives him yet another eye roll.  
“Oh gosh, the ‘no drugs even for a headache’ bull again?”.  
“You know how I feel about it, my body-“ Diego tries to get defensive, but Marben cuts him off.  
“Is a temple? Dude, your body is full of blood, bones and stinky bowels! It’s a fucking splatter movie, let a nurse tell you!”.  
As her friend pales and tries his best to disguise a gag as a cough, said nurse rushes to change the subject.  
“Anyway, since you’re here and wanna play hero, you can think about the giant spider in the shower. I’ve been showering at the hospital for the last three days for fear of a close encounter…”.  
Diego gives her a look that is half insulted and half incredulous.  
“Who do you think I am? Do I look like your father?”.  
“Do I look like your Mom?” Marben sweetly counters, without really meaning to come off as pungent. She’s looking for answers, and latching onto Diego’s joke to get them. Seeing Mom motionlessly lying on the borne settee at the Academy has made her realize for the first time how the automaton’s hair is blond, and its eyes blue. Just like Marben’s.  
And indeed Diego's eyes become pained and even a little embarrassed, before he can lower them as he bows his head, without however denying. Marben’s eyes snap closed. She brings up a hand to cup his face and run its thumb over his cheekbone.  
“I’m sorry, Diego. For real, this time: I lied about your father’s passing, but about Mom’s…”.  
Diego contritely nods, and Marben is automatically certain the chimp she saw tinkering with Mom’s inner wiring lied about programming in need of an adjustment.  
Feeling torn between pain and anger, she completes her day in the same way she started it. Holding her friend tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and this is why Diego looked for Marben after Patch's death: Mom was no longer available, and...well, what's written in the chapter. 
> 
> I realized I wrote about Cha Cha spying on Hazel and Agnes one day early (it happens the next one), sorry! I fixed it!
> 
> Now buckle up, beautiful people, shit's about to get real!


	16. The day that wasn't (I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: mentions of harassment, implied child abuse, GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF TORTURE, BLOOD AND GORE.

[ _Chapter Soundtrack_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF1DQr5dKW8)

Throughout all of history, very few names are able to trigger real panic at the Commission. As far as Five knows, the most significant ones, lately, are Abomination and Namibia Boat.  
Nobody outside management truly knows what the former means, yet Commission’s employees and temporal assassins alike fear it and tell terrifying stories about the Abomination to their children, to scare them into behaving when they’re throwing tantrums.  
It is publicly known, on the other hand, what the second name refers to. And that makes it nothing less than the most hated one throughout all the organization chart.  
Namibia Boat’s intentions and reasons have never been discovered; all that is known, is that they’re a small but prolific organization of skilled people who know how to time travel and alter timelines to their liking in such a subtle and efficient way that the Commission has never managed to undo what they create. Some times they sign their handiwork, leaving their name written on a wall or in flammable liquid set on fire onto the concrete. Other times they simply kill the hitmen sent to neutralize them.  
Temporal assassins compete for the privilege of hunting them down.  
Five himself has been tasked several times with thwarting their intervention, arriving on site just to find the enemy’s signature freshly painted or already ablaze, and there has been a time in which this used to frustrate him. As he sets off to his new job with Handler, however, he finds himself wondering if having to have those who have been his natural enemies for years so close isn’t actually a terrific opportunity to stop the Apocalypse.

“I’d like to discuss the logistics of my family’s safety at your earliest convenience. As well as this body replacement” Five cuts his boss’ chit-chat short as soon as they enter the Commission’s headquarter, intolerant of the long, elaborate panegyric Handler has just given him about what, he assumes, are his qualities she most esteems. He has only heard white noise.  
“Such chutzpah! It’s refreshing, I’ll admit” the woman chirps, tidying her hair. “Slow down, Five. All in good time. In fact, now that you’ve agreed to work with us, we’ve got all the time in the world”.

Handler guides him along a corridor he has never gone through, and shows him the room from which the briefcases come, an endless string of case managers sitting at their desks and making sure the historical events they've been entrusted with take place as expected, and the room full of pneumatic tubes from which the orders for the assassins depart.

“Any queries, so far?” she asks right in front of the Tube Room’s door. Five's eyes narrow into two slits.  
“Yeah. Who was the case manager handling me?”.  
“Ah! You mean the Apocalypse!” Handler giggles, stroking one of his cheeks and patting the other one. She hasn't stopped touching him for a moment.

Dot is a woman dressed in light blue and extremely eager to please. Five watches her smile and nod as Handler explains how she was the one who noticed his presence in 2019 and reported it to the Directors.  
“No hard feelings” she says with a too bright smile, and as he gives her the evil eye the boy realizes Dot never ordered a hitman to kill him perhaps because the Commission believed he would have died in that wasteland anyway, sooner or later. Against all odds, however, he has survived, and for more than forty years they’ve deliberately left him to rot with hunger, cold, loneliness and remorse as his only company. When he’ll leave, Five decides, he’ll do it by causing as much damage as possible.

Handler and her white noise continue with another soliloquy, at the end of which a hand lands on Five's shoulder, the woman raises her voice to attract the other employees’ attention and the office plunges into silence. A giggle, a pat, and she waltzes on the other side of the desk in front of Dot’s one. It seems that Five and Apocalypse Lady will have to work very closely.  
‘ _How convenient’.  
_ “I suspect…you like a challenge, Five”. The chair’s legs annoyingly scratch against the floor, as it gets moved and patted too, for good measure. “Which is why I’ve given you a particularly complex first case. It’s too bad Joseph Späh decided against sabotaging the fuel tank. It would have been so much easier…anyhoo, if you have any questions, I’ll be right behind you”.  
Handler finally leaves, accompanied by the sound of her heels, and Five, sitting at a desk to work as a bureaucrat for the first time in his life, doesn't know whether to be relieved or not.  
When he puts the red folder to the side and makes to start working with the typewriter, his eyes fall on the plate on the desk. 'MR. FIVE ', it says, and was already there when he arrived. Somehow, the Commission has been expecting his return.

-

Despite Handler having labeled the case as 'particularly complex', Five is confident about being able to solve it with a single order via tube; what he did not take into account, unfortunately, is the eventuality of being terrible at typewriting. That ticks him off.

“Hiya, Five! How’s it going?” Dot trills as she watches him rip the paper, and Five decides to take his frustration out on her. It doesn’t matter she didn't have him killed, he doesn't trust her. She’s a bitch.  
“I must have utter silence in order to complete this task”.  
“Oh, okay…”.  
Surprisingly, Dot tries to talk to him a couple more times, one of which she gets rudely dismissed and the other simply ignored. Five has only one thing in mind: finding clues on how to thwart the Apocalypse. So he goes to the Tube Room and makes to directly send the message to the agent awaiting his orders on the field - who he knows are Hazel and Cha Cha. Unfortunately, he gets interrupted.

“I’m afraid that’s not procedure” Handler warns him sweetly, popping out of nowhere. “Five, meet Gloria. Gloria is perhaps the single most vital cog in our machine”.  
“Aaaaw” coos the old lady coming forward and waving a hand as to blandish an overly-sugary niece. Five is surprised, when he finds himself hinting a smile at her: he’s never been one to feel solicitous toward old ladies.  
“Gloria, this is Number Fiver”.  
“Look at yooou, deadly little thing! So happy we decided to close the contract on you life!”.  
From how she looks at him, it is clear how Gloria thinks him an adorable child even though she perfectly knows what he's capable of. The joke’s on her. Five no longer has any qualm about hurting her, now.

Handler takes the liberty to go through how he decided to neutralize the threat to the timeline: she unrolls the slip of paper, reads what is written on it and Five proceeds to explain the plan he hatched to make sure LZ 129 Hindenburg burns in the sky of New Jersey on the established date without making the correction too obvious. As he does so, she looks delighted, touches him some more, and the boy can't help but feel proud about his work. It’s imaginative, subtle, precise and effective, even though produced in little time. It’s a masterful job, and he knows it.  
‘ _So much for the guy who just told his brother to not like killing. What’s wrong, with me_?’ he thinks, the derogatory part of himself battling with the gloating one. Five makes his peace by thinking that, however blood-stained his hands may be, it’s to keep his siblings safe that he does what he does.  
And after all, it’s been amusing to see Gloria repeating the noise he’s made to mimic the Hindenburg’s explosion.

-

“I’m sure you’ve all heard that Mr Five has proven to be as adept with a pen as he was with a sword”. Five takes that as the right moment to get away from Handler and go back to minding his own business; once he reaches his desk, he finds a new red folder waiting and starts leafing through it with false interest, reducing his superior's voice to background noise. She's publicly humiliating someone now, and he doesn't have the time to listen to her.  
The siren for lunch break’s start is the other signal Five has been fervently waiting for. Looking up he sees Handler leaving in the company of a guy to whom she’s saying who knows what. Quick and silent as a weasel, the boy grabs the Dot’s red file and hides it under his vest; once he reaches one of the restroom’s cubicles, however, he makes a tremendously frustrating discovery. Somebody probably already suspects of him, because a sheet with a smiley face printed on it’s all he finds in Dot’s folder. And on top, someone’s coming. Someone wearing high heels.

“Shit!”.  
“So, how’s your first day going?”.  
“Couldn’t be better!” Five lies through his teeth.  
“Glad to hear it!” Handler sing-songs as she sits down and starts to noisily do her business. Not yet satisfied, she even starts to forcibly cough. She’s so unrefined and intrusive that even Klaus would be appalled.  
“Ah. I burned my rugae. Ever burnt your rugae?”.  
‘ _No, and I didn't ask for an explanation because I don’t care_ ’.  
“Ruuuugaaaeeeeeee…the ridges of the hard palate that help pass food to the esophagus. Anyway: I’m on a liquid diet for two days, hence the marathon of urination. One faulty cog and nothing works as it should”.  
Five awkwardly slips the folder under his vest again and pulls his jacket tight around himself, feeling strangely violated.   
“You know, we value integrity at the office above all else. Trust is essential, and that trust is…built over time. But in the event of a breach, the Commission will act swiftly and without mercy. An efficiency I’m sure you above all people can appreciate, Number Five!”.  
Corrigendum, Handler’s definitely keeping a close eye on him. Does she already know about the folder he keeps hidden under his clothes?  
“I’m feeling peckish. Have you had your lunch?”.  
“Not yet”.  
“Great. How would you like to lunch with me in my office? You can eat solids foods, and I can live vicariously…through you!”. The woman’s face peeks at him from above the cubicle door, and Five has to fight with all his might against the urge to gouge her eyes out with his bare hands. He’d like to escape, partly for he has better things to do and also because he already can't stand her anymore, but that would only make her more suspicious. So he puts on a smile that people seem to find irresistible, ever since he's a kid again, and accepts.

As they walk toward her office, Handler chit-chats about this and that, animatedly gesticulating; for what is probably the sixteenth time in a few hours, Five refuses to listen to her and thinks about how to escape her clutches to do something useful to prevent the world from becoming the nightmare he has grown up in. A few meters from their destination, though, Handler gasps and brusquely stops on her tracks.  
“Oh! But I forgot you and I have unfinished business!” she says with eyes wide open and a voice that sounds too enthusiast. Five is dumbfounded, and - even if he would never admit it - a tad scared.  
“Huh?” it’s all he manages to utter, while in his head’s privacy he’s whimpering ’ _Oh god_ …’. The woman in black suggestively smiles, and taking advantage of finding him with his hands tucked into his pockets, links arms with him.  
“Come with me”.  
‘ _You do realize I'm under the age of consent, right now? How actually sick are you? Get off me!_ ’ the boy slightly panicks, while she drags him through infinite corridors and stairwells that all look alike; when they reach what seems a windowless dungeon with heavy metal doors all lined up along a rather shabby tiled wall, he realizes they’re alone and cringes.  
‘ _Oh, for fuck’s sa-_ ’.  
Surprisingly, Handler reaches out with her free hand and knocks on a door; a few seconds later, one of the agents in black overalls and red gas masks greets them.  
“We’d like to visit your little protègèe”.  
The agent only nods, almost mechanically, and silently leads them through an antechamber; as they cross it, their ears detect muffled but still clearly distinguishable bloodcurdling screams.

Although blood, tears and many other less noble bodily fluids are no news for Five, nothing could prepare him for what he’s about to see. When the cell’s door opens, his green eyes fall onto a lump of limbs, blood-stained cloth and matted hair.  
For a moment all he can see is a stringy mop amidst rubble and ash in an absolute silence that smells of decay, but then he shakes the vision off and his senses reboot.  
Unfortunately so.  
Because the agent in the cell has grabbed the prisoner by the hair, forcing her head turned toward him and Handler, and blue-green eyes look at him, one of them framed by swollen lids, both bloodshot and through a fog of tears. The prisoner is handcuffed, dressed in what looks to be a hospital gown, has been brutally beaten and besides the rough hand tightly holding her by the hair, she's being forced into submission with a cattle prod’s aid.  
Five feels his insides freeze. He knows those eyes, he knows that dear face, even if it’s more adult-looking and battered than the one he has dreamed of more times than he can count, after becoming the world’s last man standing.  
 _'Marben_!'.

“Here she is, my very favorite little Boat! Doesn't she look like someone you've seen before?” chirps Handler, lighting herself a cigarette; the boy seems to have lost the ability to speak for himself.  
“I…huh…”.  
“Come on, Five, try harder!” the woman in black laughs with what sounds like genuine fun. A tap of a finger, and the ash from her cigarette falls onto the cell’s bloodied floor. “Many years have passed, I’ll give you that!” Handler concedes, putting her lips to an appalled Five’s ear. “Although I think you’ve already figured out who she is…why don’t you just go ahead and say it?”.  
‘ _Because I’ll be damned, if I say something you still don’t know and she ends up even more in trouble!’_ he thinks, paralyzed by rage and fear alike.

“Ugh...stop hitting on the boy or I’ll be sick all over your Louboutins” groans the prisoner, surprising everyone. Five jolts out of his stupor, but unfortunately he’s not the only one to do so: preceding any reaction from the agent, Handler extinguishes her cigarette by pressing it against Marben’s neck, making her hiss in pain and show her blood-stained teeth like a feral animal.  
“Witty retorts won’t get you anything good” Five’s boss says. The prisoner lets out a broken, humorless laugh.  
“No, let’s be totally clear: **you** ’re the one who won't get anything. At. All!”.  
Even though he wishes nothing more than to reach out for her, the boy forces himself to stay put and keep his mouth shut as he watches Handler slap Marben’s bruised face, sending her tumbling to the floor while the agent in the gas mask prepares to stick the cattle prod in the prisoner’s back.   
Five is horrified to realize Marben's life has roughly become like the one he and his siblings led within the Umbrella Academy. He gets blindly furious as he thinks that, before then, she too must have suffered beatings, torture and who knows what else, in the almost seventeen years they haven't seen each other.  
It’s a thousand times worse than enduring torture himself, to stand still; to watch Marben writhe and suffer is like starting all over again.

“You’re sure her face doesn’t look familiar, Five? Truly?” it’s what Handler asks him when, with a kick, the agent turns the tortured woman on her back; who knows where, he finds the strength to nod, and his boss resorts to kicking the prisoner in the ribs. “You, scum! Have you ever seen this boy, before?”.  
Wheezing, Marben looks up at Five’s face. To beg with his eyes without making it evident is the hardest thing the boy has ever done; apparently, however, he manages to get the message across, because she too denies with a shake of her head. And although that’s what he wanted, Five feels like he just got stabbed.  
“This is turning out to be needlessly frustrating”.  
Marben scoffs at Handler’s whining.  
“I could keep doing this all day, you know”.  
One of Handler’s shiny red stilettos lands in the center of Marben’s chest, pressing.  
“Do not tempt me. We’re in no rush, time doesn’t exist here! And we know how to be oh so imaginative! Denailing, electric shock, lashing, iron branding…you name one, we’re experts about it! So what do you choose?”. Under her shoe, Marben just gasps for breath. “I’ll pick for you, the-“.

“Ho-how is it even possible for this woman to be from Namibia Boat?” Five wills himself to ask, then; he has clothed himself with all the composure he has managed to muster, and with his hands in his pockets and a listless expression on his face he almost looks like his usual self. His voice breaks a little, but he ardently hopes Handler will deem it juvenile and sweet.  
The woman in black bursts out laughing and looks at him in disbelief - luckily taking her foot off the prisoner's chest.  
“Five, you surprise me! I mean, we know each other well and surely you’ve got your flaws, but...I would never have believed you a sexist!”.  
“ **This has nothing to do with sex**!” the boy blurts out in outrage, and his superior’s expression becomes flirtatious.  
“Doesn’t it?”.  
“Oh, heck...” Marben rasps from the floor, disgusted. “You two have been together, haven’t you?”.  
Five feels himself violently blush and longs for a chasm to open under his feet and swallow him.  
“How about telling us something that might be of any real interest?” Handler crouches down to impatiently bark in her face.  
“You look like Professor Umbridge’s goth sister”.  
This time, Marben earns herself a kick in the face.

“Jesus, **stop**!” Five yells, he doesn't know whether to Handler or Marben. He can't put his finger on what they're both trying to achieve: has Marben become an idiot and a masochist, in all the years they’ve been apart? And is Handler trying to intimidate him or to be possessive of him in front of who, he dreads, she knows has been his girlfriend, long ago?  
“What’s wrong, Five? Are our celebrations not to your liking?” Handler asks puzzled when she sees him reaching out in hers and Marben’s general direction. “Don't tell me violence upsets you, now that you’re no longer a temporal assassin?!”.  
The boy simply ignores her.  
“Why is she being tortured?”.  
“Oh, my…you got soft!” the woman in black flippantly giggles. “Or…are you finally starting to remember something about her?”.  
“ **What is there to remember?** We never met!” is Five’s exasperated retort, which Handler just brushes off with a careless wave of her hand.  
“Relax, Five!”.  
“You said it yourself, Namibia Boat have always given us a hard time. Even to me” the boy adds for good measure, to emphasize how he’s not emotionally involved in the matter, only on a professional level. “Don’t you want her dead? Just kill her and be done with it!”.  
“But that’s where things start to get fun! She’s keeping some things from us…like, for example, what she and her besties get from messing up with the timelines, or…how they manage to time travel, who they take orders from!”.  
“This isn't practical at all. It's just a waste of time, nothing more, nothing less” Five restlessly says, starting to pace back and forth in front of the door, one hand in his pocket and the other one drawing wild arcs into the air.  
“Yet, is how your… **former** colleagues manage to extract all kinds of information. Have you already forgotten?”.  
Handler sounds like she’s starting to doubt his wit, now; Five stops his wandering and looks at her like **she** is the one being slow.  
“No. But temporal assassins have time to waste. We don’t. We need to improve, so the next Namibia Boat - or whatever they'll want to be called - that will be coming to us will no longer pose as a threat!”.  
“You want to offer suggestions about improving the protocols?”.  
“I may”.

At that, Handler smiles intrigued and raises from the floor, completely forgetting about Marben which gets left on the cold tiles, with the only company of her ragged breathing and her tormentor.  
“Let's discuss it over lunch, then, shall we?”. Five nods, frowning, and begrudgingly allows his boss to link arms with him again.  
“I’ll…find a way to…come looking for you…if it turns out yoh…you’re a fucking child…predator!” Marben coughs at their retreating backs. With a devilish smile, Handler turns just slightly to throw her a glance.  
“Yeah, you got yourself a reputation for doing that, but I’m not scared. You’re to be disposed of very soon anyway”.  
“I’m not gonna yield, not even in your wildest dreams!”.  
“Oh, we’ll see”.  
As she turns again to make for the door, Handler’s whimsical eyes get caught by something that makes her gasp; Five follows her gaze and sees a pair of red, high heeled sandals covered in spangles. Under everyone’s gaze, Handler snatches them from the top of the cabinet on which the’ve been abandoned, and then throws Marben a grin.   
“These are coming with me. I chose lashing… **and** electric shock!” the woman in black tells the agent, and then they’re out.  
The last thing Five hears, is the sound of a messy scuffle. It’s Marben, painfully and tiredly trying to escape from her jailer because she refuses to go down without a fight.  
He only hopes to find her alive, when he’ll finally come up with a way to whisk her away and go save humanity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I bet this wasn't the reunion you've been anticipating since 'By your window' ended. You're welcome.


	17. The day that wasn't (II).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: GRAPHIC (even if brief) DESCRIPTIONS OF TORTURE (both physical and psychological), HINTS OF SIMILARITY BETWEEN TORTURE AND RAPE, brutality, blood, gore, non consensual drug use.

[ _ Chapter Soundtrack _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQINhQ8GQ8A)

On any normal day, Five wouldn’t have the slightest qualm about upsetting Handler. In the current one, however, he has returned to the Commission to find clues on how to prevent the Apocalypse from happening and buy more time, therefore he needs to enter into her good graces and bring her to underestimate him in order to act undisturbed.  
Discovering his first love is being held in the dungeons and that any misstep on his part, even the slightest one, could cost her dearly, is one more incentive to hurry the hell up.  
So he shows himself docile and eats what he gets served, even if leaving some leftovers. He’s never been a big eater…and the trip to the dungeons left his stomach upset.

“Care for dessert?” Handler asks gesturing to a bowl of candies on her desk, and he tries to politely refuse, but since she insists he resolves to grab one and put it in his mouth before something rude manages to slip out. Something like ’ _Quit smoking, you’re grating on my nerves_ ’.

“What’s that taste like, to you?”.  
“The 1950s?” he answers, tentatively.  
“Precisely right!” Handler smiles. “Our clever metaphysics division concocted a way to perfectly distill an entire decade into a single candy, this one’s modeled after the Fudge mutt, America’s favorite in 1955”.  
“Remarkable” the boy replies out of diplomacy, but he’s already lost in his thoughts. He finds it all too easy when she starts babbling about things that don't interest him, not one little bit.  
“…building your new body”. Those words eventually snaps him out of his conjectures. “Oh, that reminds me, I have something for you!”.  
Handler calls someone via intercom, and a young woman dressed in light blue like Dot almost immediately comes in through the door, bringing along a large white box which she places on Handler’s desk before leaving.  
“Go ahead, open it!”.  
There’s a suit in the box, superbly crafted in dark blue, supple fabric.  
“Clothes make the man, Five. Won’t it be nice when you can actually wear it? Very soon, I assure you. They’re perfecting your body as we speak”.

The idea of abandoning the boyish frame in which he finds himself trapped by mistake really tempts Five. He can't stand having to play the part of the kid to be listened to anymore, and puberty’s skyrocketing hormones are driving him crazy. He hates being short, he despises looking ridiculous in the clothes he feels best suited for himself.  
But unfortunately, he has no time to think about himself, his siblings - as the world, by extension - desperately need him.  
And the woman with foggy eyes and a swollen face held in the dungeons? He’d like to put the blame for how he feels about her on the hormones again, but he knows those have no fault, in this case.  
They're priorities, his vanity is not.

“Thank you. It’s a very kind gift” he says eventually, releasing the fabric with a sigh; he doesn't notice Handler’s visible disappointment at his lack of enthusiasm, already taken as he is by what he spotted from one side of the room to the other.  
“Is that a Chinese flamethrower?”. The woman’s eyes follow his pointing finger and the shadows on her face disperse.  
“Good eye!”.  
They approach the weapons on display, and Handler introduces them to her pupil one by one, making a couple of squalid jokes about war and suicide to which Five is not sure he managed to react by putting up a face that could be considered accommodating. To avoid betraying himself, the boy brings the conversation back on the topic they decided to discuss over lunch.  
“I have some thoughts I wanted to run by you. Some suggestions, to improve Commission protocol” he says handing back Hitler’s gun.  
“Mmmh, shaking things up already! I admire that”.  
With yet another caress on the cheek and a tap on his nose, Handler puts the gun away and walks back to her desk. Five’s really getting fed up with her handsy behavior.  
“Go on, do tell!”.  
“Gloria”.  
“Mmmh”.  
“The tube operator. Wouldn’t it be simpler if case managers were to send their own messages?”.  
“I appreciate the thought, I really do. But everyone loves Gloria, I-I would never hear the end of it! She’s been with the Commission family for years, and she’s this close to making pension” she replies, in a gentle but decisive tone that doesn’t allow replies; Five is right-away sure his request won't even be taken in consideration.  
“On the other hand, did you want to suggest how to improve the procedures to extract information from prison-”.  
A hiss and a snap followed by a short, dry wail interrupt Handler, who rises from the chair and approaches the window to look out with an intrigued, creepy smile.  
“Oh, well...any changes you’ll suggest will have to be applied to our **next** prisoners, of course!”.

Assailed by an dreadful presentiment and yet unable to resist the urge to look, Five too approaches the window: in front of the gate, tied with her arms stretched around a thick pole and with the hospital gown piled at her feet, Marben endures flogging dressed in only a pair of what looks to be extremely skimpy red shorts or very old-fashioned lingerie, her bare back exposed to the eyes of a crowd of Commission employees while two other women - a short distance away, with rifles’ muzzles propped between their shoulder blades - lurch at each of the lash’s snaps and keep their heads turned to the side not to see. They’re probably waiting for their turn, and a boisterous man in a suit points at them while urging his colleagues to watch Namibia Boat’s righteous humiliation.  
Handler’s making an example of Marben and her comrades.

Someone knocks at the door and so Five has an excuse to avert his eyes from the atrocious sight. His fingers itch with the need to remove his jacket and use it to cover poor, tortured Marben’s nudity.

“Sorry to interrupt. May I have a moment alone?”.  
It’s Dot, she looks shaken. Why is she working if a show has been set up for the worker’s entertainment in the courtyard? Is it possible she watched for a while and then decided to leave in disgust?  
“Of course. Duty calls” goes Handler, putting out her cigarette and dismissing the boy in the process. “We’ll continue this discussion later, Five”.  
Forcing himself to appear relaxed, he acquiesces and gives her the satisfaction of picking some more candies from the bowl.  
As he leaves the office, he thinks he'll need an awful lot of explosive to teach the whole Commission a great lesson. Luckily, now he knows where to find some.

-

Five puts his plan into action almost right away. Almost, because before returning to his desk he runs to the bathroom to throw up. Then, once his stomach has stopped contracting and he has rinsed his clammy face, he feigns interest in his new assignment as he waits for the little show in the courtyard to be over.  
He has to compel himself to sit still and quiet, for that, because the thought of Marben’s naked body exposed to dozens of men enjoying her writhing and crying makes his blood boil. He’s always recognized torture as the despicable practice it is, but experiencing it firsthand as a child must have make him grow detached; now that he sees the kindest human being he’s ever met face it, his mind fills with squalid similarities he never considered before, not even while performing it for work.

When the siren finally signals the end of lunch break and the hallways begin to buzz with the voices of employees returning to their work, Five fakes another trip to the restroom and directly blinks into the dungeons. Two taps on the right door and the agent in the gas mask opens it. Five is deviously delighted to see he’s the one who’s been whipping his childhood sweetheart, and breaks his neck before the sod can even realize it’s him.  
Inside the cell, Marben is curled up onto her side, once again covered by the hospital gown that now is sticking to bloody sores all across her back. Who knows how many lashes she suffered.  
She’s in pain and understandably exhausted, to see her like that hurts so much that Five is afraid to even touch her. So, to let her rest a few moments more, he busies himself grabbing the dead agent under the armpits and dragging him into the cell, closing the door; when he turns around, panting, he finds Marben watching him with just one heavy-lidded eye open and a frown on her sweaty, battered face.

“I’ve been drugged, haven’t I?” she whispers pulling a face, sign that even just talking causes her pain. Five opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, then sighs.  
“I…probabilities are so high that even though I wasn’t there to see it happen, I’m pretty sure the correct answers’s yes”.  
Marben painfully reaches out for him, finding his hand already outstretched.  
“Please, I cannot die here! I need out…”.  
“Unquestionably. I’m bringing you along”.  
“NO!” the woman yelps, suddenly frantic. “Listen, I can’t tell you why, but it’s essential we return to the exact time and place we were when the guys in the gas masks showed up. Too many lives depend on it!”.  
“Time and pla…you’re a time traveler?” Five whispers in disbelief.  
“ **We** are. Yes”.  
“How-“ the boy utters, tempted to ask for explanations, but then remembers he doesn’t have the time to. “Fine. Let’s go”.

They jump to the Tube Room and crouch in a dark corner just in time to hear and see Dot hand Gloria a tube to be sent to Hazel and Cha Cha. Five turns toward Marben to explain what he intends to do, but finds out she has already made herself scarce. A barely audible pained grunt suggests that she's only crawled to hide somewhere, and he calms down.  
Five stuns Gloria with a stapler, then drags her behind the desk and inspects the contents of the tube he snatched from her hand: what is written on the sheet doesn't ring any bells, but he pockets it anyway and proceeds to place two new orders.  
He pits Hazel against Cha Cha and vice versa, and doesn’t notice the hand snatching Gloria’s shoes, exactly as he misses the noise of stilettos approaching as he sends off the two tubes with the forged messages.

“You know that’s not how we do things here” says Handler without preambles, her voice dripping with exasperation. “Where’s Gloria?”.  
“Dunno. Couldn’t find her anywhere” Five shrugs, feigning innocence, but just then Gloria starts grunting, and Handler catches sight of her lying on the ground.  
“You’re a great disappointment, to me” it’s what she says when she turns an almost grotesquely displeased face toward the boy, who drops the act and readies himself for battle. “You can’t change what’s to come, Five! I truly find it so odd that you can’t shed this fantasy, you’re a first-rate pragmatist! You belong here with us!”.  
“I don’t belong anywhere, thanks to you. You made me a killer!” he snarks back, but a moment later Handler’s unzipping a hidden slit in her skirt to pull out a handgun from the garter belt she wears underneath, and rather than arguing he thinks it’s wise to focus on escaping.  
“You were always a killer. I just pointed you in a direction” she says, and Five jumps before the shot can hit him.

Someone sets off an alarm, a recorded voice begins to alert the entire facility of a security breach and to summon surveillance. Five doesn't notice Gloria sneaking out of the Tube Room, he's too busy blinking here and there to confuse Handler who keeps taking aim and shooting at anything that moves; for an instant, however, he wonders where Marben has gone, and fervently hopes she won't come out of her bolthole at just the wrong moment.  
Coming across a cart full of empty tubes, he pushes it against his now twice ex employer, but she blocks it with a foot shod in one of those ridiculous patent leather shoes of hers, so out of place in a gunfight. Four more shots get fired. They all miss.

“What’s the rush, Five? We’re just getting started! Is this how you want the last line of your report to read?”.  
“When I’m done, I’m just done, I guess” pants Five blinking behind her, with an impudent smile on his face; Handler turns briskly.  
“You can’t keep this up, Five. We both know that even you have a limit”.  
He does know, indeed. He’s tiring himself out and feels dizzy, his spatial jumps could start to fail at any moment. Yet, he doesn't even try to evade Handler's aim. If his calculations are correct...  
“I saved you from a timeline of being alone! **You owe me**!”.

With a cry and a whirl of long blond hair, Marben literally leaps out of nowhere and throws herself at Handler, who, taken aback, pulls the trigger before getting slammed into the rack of pneumatic tubes; Five realizes he hadn't counted correctly, after all, because one last bullet explodes from the gun and hits the ceiling with a loud metallic clang.  
Handler shakes the surprise off and grabs Marben by the hair, trying to get her off herself, but with a sneer the escaped prisoner slams something black and pointed on her temple, stunning her and sending them both to tumble on the floor. The blunt object rolls in front of Five's feet, bloodied. It’s one of Gloria's heels.  
Not far away, Handler lands a punch on Marben's swollen face, making her recoil with a hiss; when Handler straddles her and tries to put her hands around her neck, however, the blond grabs her by the wrists and darts up to head-butt her, overturning their position with a swift lunge, grabbing her head and brutally banging it against the floor once, twice, thrice. Once more for good measure, even though with less force.  
When her tormentor goes limp, the no longer captive Marben finally turns to look at Five, disheveled, her chest heaving, her face and hands splattered with blood - not all hers. The boy is flabbergasted.  
“I…do owe a debt. But it’s, huh…not to you” he whispers after a few seconds, to Handler’s still body; Marben looks at him as if she wanted to ask what he just said, but then shakes her head and rasps something else entirely.  
“What now?”.  
Five pulls a grenade out of his pocket and waves it in front of her: Marben nods and drugs herself toward the door. Only a moment later she’s greeted by the boy himself, who grabs her wrist and hauls her around the corner, just in time to avoid the explosion.

“Hold on!” Five pleads when pain and fatigue have the best of Marben and her knees give out. She grits her teeth and pulls herself to her feet holding on to him. “Now, tell me hour, date and exact location you need to be sent to”.  
“Commerce Street, Dallas, Texas. November 15th, 1963. Eleven…thirty pm. Yeah, that should work”.  
The boy looks like he can’t wrap his head around how expertly she’s handling the whole situation.   
“…forgive me, how old would you be?” he asks after a moment of confused silence. Marben gives him the most perplexed gaze she’s able to, considering her miserable state.  
“I’m twenty-three”.  
’ _So very young_ ’ Five thinks, assuming the one he's talking to is the Marben from 2010, a Marben who hasn't seen him in eight years. How was it possible for her life as a beloved daughter from a well-respected family to morph into one of torture, murder and time travel?  
‘ _There are so many things about you that I don't know…and you about me_ ’.  
“Okay. I'm taking you to your friends now. You’ll have to wait a bit, there’s something I need to do before getting you back to Texas”.  
Again, Marben nods. Five surprises himself by giving her a soft smile: despite his own best judgment, he’s proud of her.

In the cell, two heads - as disheveled and battered as Marben's - whirl to look their way. Five returns the gaze looking at them both for a second’s fraction, and his shock is so big he almost drops to the ground the fugitive he's holding up.  
“Wha’…” the boy wheezes, but one of the two women, looking nauseous, talks over it, looking at him as if she thought him a ghost.  
“Holy fuck. They drugged us, didn't they?”.  
Only then Five realizes something: Marben, Lear and Diana still see him as a kid, and cannot believe their eyes.  
He doesn't get the chance to explain the predicament he finds himself in, however, because Diana throws herself at Marben, walking on wobbly legs and letting out a sob.  
“Oh gosh, I feared I would have never seen you again!”. She cautiously runs her hands on Marben’s face, her ribcage, her arms; always the comforting one, Marben squeezes one of them and steers the attention away from herself.  
“I’ll be fine. How are you? Lee?”.  
From the back of the little cell, Lear painstakingly pulls herself to stand.  
“A mess, as you can see. But we’ll live, if we run”. Then, her blue gaze shifts on Five. “Dunno what’s going on, here...but do you happen to have a plan?”.  
The boy nods, comforted to see that Marben isn’t alone, and prepares to blink.  
“Marben can fill you in while I fetch you a briefcase. Be right back”.

Luckily, Five still retains the energy needed to take a few more jumps. With the first one he materializes in the Briefcase Room and hacks one of them, setting it on the coordinates Marben gave him to make her and her friends reappear in the exact place and time they were captured in. In the commotion caused by his bombing of the tube Room, nobody notices him, so he assumes his luck hasn't run out yet.

“Take this. I set it to the destination you asked for” he says when he goes back to the cell the Girls are hiding in, handing the case to Marben. She takes it, uncertainly looking at him.  
“Why are you helping us?”.  
Five gives her a brief once over: despite injury, exhaustion and the drugs messing up with her brain, she stands up as proud as possible in that eyesore of a hospital gown, Gloria's shoes - one of which is stained with Handler's blood - and little else. She’s battered but unbent, unwilling to let torture and humiliation affect her, and for the first time since his return Five truly feels like a teen, his heart wildly fluttering into his chest like when they both were kids, in love with each other and she used to look at him like he was all she wished for. He certainly still thinks she’s the coolest girl in the world.  
“Well...once I promised I would always be there, for you, right?” he whispers, feeling nostalgic. Marben's open eye, however, becomes steely.  
“Yeah…but then it went differently”.  
Strangely, Five doesn't feel the need to react badly to that dig.  
“I’m here, now” he says softly. Then, hinting at the briefcase, “Go”.  
“Are you gonna make it?”.  
“Of course! I’m indestructible, you said it yourself. After that fire”.  
“Gee, I’m not spaced-out enough to hear this crappy mush…” Lear mumbles from somewhere behind Marben, sounding whiny.  
“Shhh!” goes Diana.  
Marben turns toward her friends and they all gather around the briefcase, exchanging nods. They’re ready.  
“Thanks” she says, bloodshot eye latching on Five. He smiles, and then blinks right behind her.  
“See you soon… **Doll** ” the boy whispers in her ear just before sticking a needle into her neck and pushing the syringe’s plunger. The narcotic immediately enters the woman’s already drugged bloodstream, and luckily Marben can't do anything but flinch, or in all likelihood Five would inadvertently open a gash in her throat.  
As she collapses on herself, Five pushes a scrap of paper into her fist and then proceeds to narcotize Lear and Diana as well, who just like Marben don't have the readiness or strength to resist, and after making sure their hands are all on the briefcase, he opens it, leaping back not to end up in Texas with them.

-

On a seedy sidewalk in Dallas, 1963, three battered, bloodied and exhausted women look around, impossibly relieved at their escape’s outcome as they kneel on the concrete.  
One of them turns to noisily vomit, the other two catch the eye of a distinguished man dressed in a dark suit and a long black coat, who’s staring with wide eyes and standing on the sidewalk as if he had been waiting for them.  
The woman wearing a bloodied shoe removes her companion’s hand from the black briefcase laying in front of them and throws it in the middle of the deserted street, watching as it explodes destroying itself. A moment later, she’s collapsing, and the man in the long coat springs forward to grab her. By her side, on the pavement, a scrap of paper with a date, a location, an hour and a plea to be there written on, in the spidery handwriting of a fidgety, teenage leftie.  
The man picks it up. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and this was how Diana (and Lear and Marben as well) got her gruesome scars. I hope I haven't upset you too much.
> 
> Does anyone notice something familiar, in the last part? 
> 
> Love you all.


	18. 6 - The day that was (I).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: mentions of death, corpses, privacy violation, implied torture and non consensual drug use.

  
  
  
  
  
  
“So. This is what we came back in this damn city for” Lear grumbles, glaring at the Umbrella Academy’s front wall. Marben sighs and checks once again the scrap of paper she has kept stored into her wallet for the last eight and a half years.  
“Yes, according to what this note says”.  
Lear stops fiddling with her lighter and turns to give her friend a glare.  
“Ah. The one retrieved by the gravedigger and presumably written by your first love. Charming, all your bad taste in men manifesting in just one go”.  
“You done?” asks Marben, unfazed, as both Diana and Myery react to Lear’s sourness with an eye-roll.  
“Not in a million years. But let’s get moving, the sooner we finally see adult Five and the sooner we can leave”.  
“Let's at least hear what he has to say, first. We owe him”.  
“Yeah, yeah, whatever” Lear mumbles, and slipping the unlit cigarette from her lips she goes to open the gate. The others follow her lead, and Diana rings the bell. The door gets opened by the chimpanzee in butler livery Marben crossed paths with the previous day.  
“Yes?”.  
“HOLY SH-“ Lear blurts staring wide-eyed at the ape, but Myery elbows her halfway through the curse, and she backpedals with a wheeze. “-ROUD OF MAGDALENE. Holy Shroud of Magdalene, I’m so excited to finally be here, on the famous Umbrella Academy’s doorstep! Nice to meet you”.  
“Great, we’ve already made ourselves known” Diana mumbles, facepalming.  
Confused, the chimp gives each of the four women a quick glance and then sets his gaze on Marben (leading her to believe he must consider her the sanest of the group), even if it’s unclear whether he recognizes her or not.  
“May I help you, Miss?”.  
“Yes. F...I mean, Number Five asked us to come. Is he home?”.  
“I haven't seen him in a while, but please, do not wait on the door. Come in”.

“How’s Mom?” Marben asks, both metaphorically and literally sidestepping the monumental chandelier and the shattered table in the middle of the dark foyer; the Girls look at her as if she just spoke a language unknown to most. **Hargreevesish**.  
“She’s doing fine, Miss. Thank you” the chimpanzee quietly replies, throwing her a glance and then quickly averting his gaze. Marben's distrust of him has less to do with his species and more with his evasive behavior every second that passes.  
However, the matter slips out of her mind as soon as the ape stops and invites them to walk through a door with a wave of the paw. The Girls enter the Umbrella Academy’s living room as a united front, and a thousand plus one things catch their attention all at once.

“…we didn’t choose this life, we’re just living it. For the next three days, anyway”.  
“But the last time we tried to stop it, we all died!”.

“Gosh, it wasn’t brown acid at all!” blurts out Lear, bypassing pleasantries and attracting everyone’s attention.  
For a moment, the Girls stare at Five in utter astonishment, while the Hargreeves in full give them a quizzical look from half a room away. Then Klaus pulls himself up from the divan on which he’s sprawled, enthusiastically clapping his hands.  
“Oh, ‘Murder, She Wrote’! Yaaaaaaaay!”.  
Marben doesn’t appreciate the joke and sends him a chilling glare, even if everyone except him and Ben fails to get it; Klaus, however, is not intimidated and blatantly checks her out. “Love your outfit…although you'd look better off without it…”.  
Five inhales sharply. Allison ignores both her brothers and addresses the newcomers.  
“Excuse me? Is there something we can help you with?”.  
“Yeah, I’d like to point out that I’m deeply disappointed with your choice of a butler. I was expecting someone more like Niles from 'The Nanny'” Lear replies, refusing to acknowledge the actress’ attitude.  
“That, and why exactly was your father obsessed with taxidermy?” Myery steps in, staring in bewilderment at the numerous hunting trophies covering the walls.  
“ **Why does that one look like a brick on steroids**? **And how the heck is it possible for that other one to still look like a kid**?”.  
If Lear and Myery simply sound baffled, Diana seems to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown as she points to Luther and then Five. Marben can relate.  
“WHO LET THEM IN?” Allison yells toward the door’s general direction, making those closest to her cover their ears.  
“The, huh…”.  
Anxious to put aside the shock resulting from the sight of a still adolescent Five despite being lucid and present, Marben throws herself headlong into an answer, only to realize she doesn’t know how to sidestep the fact that the butler isn’t human; so she awkwardly mimics a walking stick, a waistcoat and reading glasses.  
“Pogo” Diego graciously comes to her aid. She looks at him with wide eyes, and although seeing him wear the blue and black sweater she gave him makes her soften, she shoves the feeling aside.  
“Who?”.  
“Pogo, the chimp”.  
“…why 'Pogo’?” mumbles Diana, confusedly looking at Lear.  
“Good point, as in 'Pogo-stick’?”.  
“Or 'pogo' like the up-and-down you do at concerts?”.  
“Irrelevant!” Five barges in. “Listen, I asked you to co-“.  
“Hey **where is Vanya**? Are you fuckwads teaming up without her like when we were kids?” Lear cuts him off, and before he can get his frustration in check, the boy finds himself throwing his empty paper cup at her. She dodges, chuckling.  
“Don’t take offense, but I feel like I’m being threatened by a cupcake!”.  
“I loathe you, are you aware?” Five hisses. Lear sneers.  
“Oh, really? What a coincidence!”.  
“Okay, now can somebody explain why are they here?” Allison makes herself be heard above the banter, sounding as she’s already had enough of everything and everyone. “Really, I don't wish to come off as rude, but we were discussing family matters…”.  
“I invited them. Yesterday” Five says, and his sister gives him a perplexed look.  
“Yesterday?”.  
“Mine, not yours” the boy clarifies. Marben’s blue-green eyes catch fall on the briefcase abandoned onto the counter, and some of the the puzzle’s pieces fall into place.  
“Okay, so?” asks Allison. Five ignores her and turns toward the Girls.  
“Sorry if I’m brutal, but we can’t afford the luxury of taking things slow. Back when we met at the Commission, more than eight years ago for you but only mere minutes for me, I was there to find out more about the end of the world, which they’re determined to let take place in three days time. Before you try to call me crazy, let me explain how I know they’re not bluffing: on November 10, 2002, I attempted my first travel through time, which took me sometime after April 1 of the current year. I found no living soul, there. Just rubble, ash...and corpses”. Everyone goes suddenly silent, still and balking, as if sharing some sort of shared emotional response. Perhaps it’s the boy's deadly serious tone, or maybe the haunted look he gives them, either way the Girls don't doubt his words for a moment.  
In addition to the shocking revelation and the chagrin on Five's face, Marben finds herself scared of disclosing what truly happened on the fateful day he disappeared into thin air. Therefore, she’s extremely grateful to Lear, when she asks what everyone in the room wants to know.  
“What caused it?”.  
“I don’t know” Five admits.  
“Why didn't you come back to alert everyone?” goes Myery, and at that the boy uncharacteristically seems to get embarrassed.  
“I, huh…didn’t know how to travel backwards. It took me forty-five years to find out, and once I tried the equations turned out to be incorrect anyway. That's why I look like this”.  
“Am I getting this right, then? You basically are…a grown man in a kid's body?” Marben asks in a thin voice, and the boy looks at her, nodding.  
“An old one, yes”.

Marben truly doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. It seems she wasn't in the wrong, after all, to picture Five as a man…only that, unfortunately, his adult body hasn't followed him through the jump. Should this make her feel heartened or sorrowful? Overwhelmed by the general bewilderment, she can't decide.

“You clearly have a plan to prevent the whole mess from happening. So what do we have to do with it, apart from dying?”.  
“Well...there are Hazel and Cha Cha in town, two ex colleagues of mine. They’re here to kill me because of what I’m trying to do…”.  
“And they’re mine” Diego says in a peremptory voice, sternly looking at Five who scoffs back.  
“Don't piss me off. The literal end of the world is about to happen and all you can think of is revenge?”.  
“I wouldn't have to, if you didn’t-“.  
“ **Guys** ” Marben thunders, silencing them both. After a moment of much needed silence, she turns to the boy again, imperiously cocking an eyebrow. Five makes a face, like he’s actually forcing himself to say what he’s about to.  
“They won’t be a problem. I falsified their assignments, if everything goes as planned they’ll wipe each other out…or one of them will kill the other and the Commission will have the survivor terminated for insubordination. The real trouble will begin once the Commission will send anyone they can count on after us, in order to preserve the timeline…I was hoping the four of you would be amenable to offer a diversion to keep occupied whoever will come, while we investigate the clue I managed to suss out”.

Suddenly, the vast living room resonates with up-roaring laughs: Five and the Girls look at the others in disbelief, seeing Diego cradling his injured arm - which probably is giving him hell - to his shaking chest and Allison doubled over, holding onto Luther’s arm as he wipes his eyes with his sleeve; in between in the corner, Klaus shares a perplexed glance with his invisible brother Ben.  
“ **Them**?” Allison wheezes pointing at the Girls, when the laughter seems to be subsiding, just to make it start all over again. “You gotta be kidding!”.  
“I’m not” it’s Five’s calm reply; he’s standing straight - even if slightly favoring his right leg - hands tucked inside his pockets as usual. If Marben remembers even just the littlest thing about him, he’s waiting for his siblings to reach the right amount of stupidity necessary to humiliate themselves, sparing him the bother.  
Apparently he’s not the only one to be doing so, and when Diego loudly slams a hand onto the counter making a bad joke, Diana’s ready.  
“You want to unleash these four chicks onto an army of textbook bad guys? They walk the catwalk in sexy lingerie, man!”.  
Five knows all too well. Back in the first months of his forced stay on Apocalypse Avenue, he used to raid flats and shops in search of non-perishables and shelter; on one memorable occasion, he had found some teenager's secret stash of magazines, hidden under a rubble-covered but otherwise intact mattress. On a couple of those, there had been shots of the Girls from the fashion show Diego is talking about.  
For half a second he can see the point, but it is still satisfying when Klaus yelps at the sounds of a knife lodging itself within a hairsbreadth from Luther's feet, making him leap backwards with a high-pitched scream and inadvertently jostle Allison who trips into the carpet and ends up ungracefully landing onto a nearby stool; the other dagger almost makes it to Diego’s hand, but he intercepts it with one of his, that deflects the attack and lands between Lear's and Marben's ankles. Failing twice to identify who threw the first two.  
All the Hargreeves but Five and Ben, then, turn stunned gazes onto the women they’ve been making fun of.  
“It only happened once” Diana sourly mumbles. Beside her, Marben nods and sighs.  
“Yeah. We were twenty…”.  
“Now, don't make it sound like it's something to be ashamed of or like we're old, you two!” Myery scolds them.  
Five hurries to brush off the memory of Marben in suggestive lingerie and resume the original subject before he ends up embarrassing himself in front of everyone.  
“There’s nothing textbook about temporal assassins, or about these four women. The Commission fears them, and if so, it’s for a good reason. Probably more than one, if I have to be completely honest: I saw them in action, they’re not just what they appear to be”.  
“Yeah, about that” Allison steps in, raising from the stool “I don’t think we should involve them. We don’t know whether they’re trustworthy”.  
“ **What**?” Five, Diego, Klaus and even Ben blurt out. Lear, instead, bursts out laughing.  
“Oh, that’s rich! You really have **the stones** to say something like that in our faces, Allison Hargreeves? You ungrateful asshat!”.  
“Then tell us why Five believes you are some sort of super secret agents but everyone else knows you as models and part-time nurses!” the actress counters with fervor. “I’ve tried looking you up, all of you, individually and then as a group: there’s nothing to prove you’re certified nurses, or about you being called...Tess, Greta or whatever!”.  
The only one standing in the no-man’s-land between the two groups, Five nods.  
“You’re right, the amount of available info about them is pretty close to nothing…”.  
“You looked us up as well?” Marben asks in a low, outraged voice that reverberates like a shout, turning a furious gaze on the boy; Five gives her a deer-in-the-headlights one, frozen on the spot.  
“I...sorry. Had to come up with something to pass the time, when…alone in the future”.  
It is still awful to think that someone Marben holds so dear resorted to old archives to learn private stuff about her. Unbidden, the memory of Five's resentment, that night of so many years prior when she had confessed having looked up information about his family, flashes through her mind, and she’s suddenly able to understand how he felt.  
He was right, it’s disturbing when someone tries to pry into your private life, even if you’re famous. This manages to disarm her a little. At least on that matter, at least toward Five.  
“Why would you do something like that?” Diana turns to mumble in Allison’s direction, looking miffed but clearly unwilling to pick on Five after his heartbreaking admission.  
“Because I was worried about my family, and still am! I don’t know yo-“.  
“Yet you know you owe us your unconditional trust” Marben brusquely cuts her off with a spine-chilling glare. When Allison fails to answer but also to lower her gaze, she makes sure to end the argument once and for all. “I may have not told the anesthetist to give you an epidural just for fun”.  
At that, the actress looks stricken and at a loss for words. On the divan, Ben lowers his gaze in shame, too: he knows how much Marben has done for his sister, in the past years.

The Girls exchange a round of glances, from which they assume to have all come to the conclusion of having to reveal at least something about their mysterious lives.  
“Since you all seem so eager to know, we truly are certified nurses” Lear says, eventually. “It’s not our main occupation, but we resort to it every time we need to become anonymous and efficiently disappear”.  
“Our employer made us get an ADN while we were already working for them” Diana clarifies.  
“And the modeling bit?” Diego queries.  
“Oh, yeah. That’s for cover” Marben snickers. “Since we got pretty famous, during the ‘Daddy Dearest' trial, and we needed to disappear completely…our boss thought it wise to let our true identities keep being under the limelight. So Diana, Lear, Marben and Myery go down the catwalk or pose for the magazines…and no one thinks to go looking for them somewhere else. Like, for example, in the corridors of a hospital”.  
“And does it work? I mean, do your patients not recognize you?” Diego frowns. Myery shrugs and slightly smiles.  
“At times, maybe, but they probably dismiss the resemblance thinking they’re mistaking us for someone else. After all, how many women wearing scrubs and with no make-up do you see on TV? And I mean **truly** no make-up”.  
“Good point”.  
“Why do you hide?” Klaus slurs from the divan. Lear sighs.  
“Our true job is dangerous”.  
“Haphazardly changing timelines until you get killed, you mean?” Five asks.  
“That’s the kind of service MI6 requires of us, yes” explains Myery with a sardonic smile. “Not the ‘getting killed’ part, obviously. The other one”.  
“About that, where were you while your cousin and friends were being tortured?”. At the boy’s salacious question, the red-haired woman blushes.  
“Busy stealing a dachshund…”.  
“It’s insane…why would anyone accept such a job?” Allison queries in a thin voice.  
“We discovered some of the Commission’s dirty little secrets, years ago...MI6 stepped in, offering us training and protection in exchange for service. They needed someone foolish enough to go mess up the timelines in order to attract attention and catch some enemy agents to bring to the headquarters. For…you know, **interrogation** ” immediately goes Marben.  
“You just disappeared, then? And your families let you do it?” asks Five.  
“They weren’t exactly able to oppose, we were already of age by then. Truth is, things got ugly once the Commission figured their secrets were out in the open…for us, and for them too, as a result. At least now that we’re working for them, MI6 is keeping our families safe” Diana grimly says.  
For a moment nobody dares to speak, the silence is heavy with guilt and sympathy; then, Luther’s brow furrows and he takes the stage for the first time.

“So…the plan is to kill the guy the Commission wants to protect while they distract the agents?”.  
Five nods, looking mildly impressed.  
“Exactly. Does anyone have questions?”.  
On the background, Diego raises his good hand looking like someone who doesn’t truly know what they’re doing. On closer inspection, Marben notes he’s glancing sideways at the divan. And in fact, Klaus enthusiastically leaps to his feet.  
“Thanks, man! I wanted to ask, does any of you know at all if crabs think fish fly?”.  
Typically Klaus, finding a way to ask to speak through his brother, knowing full well no one would have taken him seriously had he raised his hand. It’s both unnerving and heartbreaking, Marben thinks as Five facepalms, Allison sighs, Lear laughs and Ben lets himself plop down supine onto the divan.  
“It doesn’t matter, because Allison’s right: we can’t help you. There’s not just our safety at stake, here” she says, surprising everyone except the Girls. “You cannot ask us to sacrifice ourselves **and** our loved onesfor humanity’s sake”.  
“If you back off and do nothing your families won’t be spared anyway, three days from now!” Five growls through gritted teeth; from the look Marben gives him is abundantly clear he didn’t manage to ruffle even one of her feathers, so he softens and tries to approach the topic from another front. “You can do it. I know you can, I've seen it! I’ve been sent loads of times after Namibia Boat, and I always was at least one step behind, even though I was the Commission’s top agent! They called me The Legend!”.  
“Yes, well, no offense, but you were just one...we’re talking about who knows how many hitmen, here” Diana counters, with a nervous chuckle that holds absolutely no amusement.  
“All we ask of you is to buy us some time...in any way you can” immediately goes Five, ignoring his siblings’ remarks and growing increasingly desperate. “It’ll be just like any other work day, for you”.  
Marben feels her heartstrings being pulled, and she doesn't need to look at the Girls to know they’re not faring any better. After all, it's about letting the whole world go down in flames or at least try to give a little hope to everyone, including their families. Including Grace and David.  
“We’re here to hide, not to attack. We have no plan, no backup, we’re not equipped…” she tiredly says after a moment, her voice so very thin. Five turns toward her, looking sad, but also hopeful.  
“You won’t be alone. We’ll catch up to you once we’ll have dealt with our guy” he says, and as she looks up at him he feels like if they were alone in the living room. “Please. This is too important”.  
Marben lowers her gaze again, and sighs.  
“We…we need to think about it. And see if we can take some precautions to safeguard our families, just in case things might go awry...”.“What?” Luther loudly squawks. Five ignores him and takes a limping step toward the Girls.  
“Nothing’s going to happen to you or them. We’ll prevent it” he tells them, somewhat managing to sound reassuring. Then, he picks up one of Marben’s hands in his, and they lock gazes once again. “You…you saved my life. I won’t let you fail”.  
“Still, better be safe than sorry” Marben ruefully says, with a shrug. “After all, you worked for the Commission for years. After what you did for us, in your yesterday…we can trust you with our lives. But not with theirs”.  
Five closes his green eyes for a moment, then, bows his head and sighs. It pains him to know that even his most sincere repentance will never undo all the bad he did on Handler's behalf, but he doesn't have time to feel sorry for himself, and Luther takes care of pointing it out.  
“We have no time-”.  
“Do please shut up” Diana brusquely interrupts him. “We know the stakes are exorbitant, we’re just asking a few hours to evaluate if we can put in place a plan that works and find a way to protect our loved ones”.  
“Fine. Just make it quick, alright? If you say yes, you’ll may have to act immediately. As soon as Hazel or Cha Cha dies” Five says, ignoring all the other voices, focusing only on Marben. She nods.  
The boy gives her the faintest hint of a smile, which she finds herself barely returning. Then Lear breaks the moment, and the boy recalls he can’t stand her, even when she’s right.“Let’s go, then. We have a lot of work to do, and unfortunately the hospital can’t replace all the four of us”.

So the two groups disperse, between nods of greeting and some skeptical mumblings about Five's plan, the Girls’ reliance, the approval rating that more or less everyone has of Klaus, after his last intervention.  
“I’m the one throwing knives, here” Diego makes sure to mumble at Diana as she’s about to leave the living room. She stops, turns to look at him and smiles.  
“I get to do what I want, if I have to be a diversion”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...well, as you probably assumed from my prolonged absence, this chapter proved to be an absolute pain in the ass. Long, full of characters who never agree with each other, a lot of explaining going on...I still don't know if I'm fully satisfied with what came out of it. Still, I hope you were! 
> 
> Finally Five and Marben are reunited...no drama, no fluff, no feels. Yet. But everything's possible, from here on! ;)
> 
> I hope you're all well, dear ones. Love.
> 
> PS: Back to one update per week! Sorry, life and stuff.


End file.
